The schismatic Poor Clares of Belorado have suffered a defeat in court in the dispute over the eviction of their monastery.
An urgent appeal by the sisters to stop the eviction action by Archbishop Mario Iceta, who had been appointed papal commissioner, was rejected last week, as the archdiocese of Burgos has now announced.
Archbishopric of Burgos has now announced the eviction proceedings are therefore continuing.
The court also dismissed a lawsuit in which the women wanted to establish that Iceta had no authority over the monastery.
According to the decision, the appointment of the Pontifical Commissioner by the Vatican is a separate matter for the Church, in which state courts have no jurisdiction.
In its decision, the Briviesca court referred to Spanish religious constitutional law, which guarantees the church autonomy in the exercise of its own affairs.
The archdiocese had already filed an action for eviction in Septemberas the excommunicated sisters are still on the property. They had attempted to convert the convent into an association under civil law and thus continue to have access to the property.
According to the archbishopric, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior has refused to allow the former nuns to convert the convent into an association.
The convent and its assets are church property and do not belong to individual members of the order. This means that the former nuns have no personal claim to the convent.
So far, the eviction has failed, partly because the lawsuit could not be served on all the sisters.
The eviction was originally scheduled for the end of January.
The archdiocese has not given a new date.
Ex-sisters open up alternative sources of finance
In the meantime, the former nuns have rented a former hotel in Asturias to run a restaurant there.
The spiritual care of the women in the hotel has been taken over by a apparently a vagrant bishop consecrated in Germany in Germany.
In addition to the restaurant, the women also want to earn money by breeding livestock - in the past, measures have already been taken against the community for illegal dog breeding.
The conflict surrounding the Poor Clares of Belorado has continued to escalate in recent months.
In May, the sisters published a manifesto in which they distanced themselves from the Catholic Church and declared that they would not recognise any popes after Pius XII.
In the course of the conflict, they joined various schismatic alleged bishops and were and were excommunicated because of their schism.
All attempts at mediation by the papal commissioner Iceta failed.
In addition to the schismatic ex-nuns, there are five elderly sisters in need of care in the convent who have not joined the schism.