Sunday, July 14, 2024

Spanish diocese billed for schismatic nuns’ debts


The Archbishop of Burgos received a bill for nearly €7,000 for silk sheets, velvet bed throws and “top of the range” duvets ordered in January by a community of nuns he excommunicated last month.

According to the supplier of the bedlinen, Poor Clares of the monastery in Belorado near Burgos said it would be used by “a visiting cardinal”.

The archdiocese did not confirm claims the ex-nuns also owed large sums for smartphones and legs of cured Iberian ham.

In May, the nuns announced they no longer accepted the authority of Pope Francis, after Church authorities obstructed a property deal. They chose as their leader the self-styled bishop, Pablo de Rojas Sánchez, with whom they have since broken ties.

On social media, the community has voiced support for Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former nuncio to the US whom the Vatican excommunicated on 4 July after an extrajudicial penal process.

The nun’s leader Sr Isabel of the Trinity has now accused Archbishop Mario Iceta of Burgo of seeking to “asphyxiate” the community of 10 nuns, whom he excommunicated after they sent him a fax confirming their “irreversible” decision to leave the Church.

Sr Isabel sent screenshots of WhatsApp messages and emails to the television programme Todo es Mentira (“It is all a lie”), purportedly showing that the archdiocese had threatened to cut off the monastery’s electricity.

“This coercion is infamous!” she said, adding: “We have written to [the archdiocese] and they don’t reply.” 

The archdiocesan management committee for the convent accused her of “reckless disregard for the truth”. In a statement, they denied threatening to cut off the electricity, saying Sr Isabel had ignored four separate requests for legal, administrative and financial information.

The committee said it had received “more than 20 bills so far for an amount exceeding €35,000 and requests totally approximately €9,800 to pay the salaries of 11 convent employees”. 

As the nuns’ bank accounts only contain €6,000, the bills would be met by funds “coming from various monasteries in the Federation of Poor Clares of Our Lady of Aránzazu”.

Additional reports in the Spanish press quoted anonymous sources describing Sr Isabel – whose real name is Laura García de Viedma – as “opinionated”.

One source claimed: “She lives like a marchioness.” Another described the nuns’ sideline breeding golden retrievers as “illegal, and disastrous business-wise”.

The community allegedly owes money for new kitchen equipment for their main business selling chocolate truffles and “mojito bon-bons”.