Three of the nuns were hospitalised following a medical check-up “owing to their greatly deteriorated condition”, said a statement from the Vatican commission in charge of the community.
Their poor health was due to “the insalubrious, precarious and deficient conditions in which they lived and as they have manifested to us”, the statement continued.
The five were the only sisters to remain Poor Clares after the rest of the community, based in Belorado near Burgos, voluntarily left the Catholic Church in 2024 on the grounds that they no longer accepted the authority of Pope Francis or any pope after Pius XII.
On 18 December, all five were removed by police from the monastery of St Clare of Orduña in the Basque country, where they had been moved from because the schismatic nuns face a legal threat of eviction from the Belorado convent.
A former Poor Clare on the Orduña premises contacted Spanish media, saying in a video they were being detained in the chapel “by a judicial committee”.
The youngest of the elderly nuns is 88 years old. Two of the rescued sisters have joined other convents that belong to the Federation of Poor Clares of Our Lady of Aránzazu.
Police expressed concerns about the nuns’ welfare after visiting the Orduña monastery in November to investigate reports the community were illegally selling works of art. They reported seeing dog faeces on the premises.
A lawyer representing the ex-nuns said the judge’s decision was based on an inspection of the lower part of the monastery where the dogs sleep. “They have mixed up the lower and upper floors. No one lives on the ground floor,” said Enrique García de Viedma, who is also the brother of the community’s former abbess.
The press officer for the Belorado community distributed videos showing clean bedrooms, bathrooms adapted for the infirm and adjustable reclining beds.
One observer who saw the rescued nuns told Spanish reporters: “They had been systematically badly cared for. We found them very dirty and very thin. The nuns required special care which they had not received.”
The Spanish daily ABC reported that one of the five, speaking of the schismatic nuns in the ambulance leaving the convent, said: “I don’t believe we belong to the same religion.”