The announcement of the return on Friday evening, the aides of the sisters have linked with allegations against the spokesman of the Apostolic Commissioner.
For the three religious women, a lifelong dream came true with the trip to Rome.
"Unfortunately, the joy of the sisters was significantly clouded by media statements by Harald Schiffl, a Viennese communication consultant and press officer of the Apostolic Commissioner, by spreading falsehoods about them without any consultation with the sisters," the message from the circle of helpers said.
Schiffl had emphasized in an interview with katholisch.de and in a press release that there had been no approval for the trip and that the sisters, in his view, would be instrumentalized from various sides.
Previously, it was reported that the sisters had disappeared.
"The conspiracy theories already circulated days ago by Mr. Schiffl, according to which the sisters had been transferred to Rome against their will or even abducted, were so obviously untrue that they at best caused astonishment and exhilaration," the aid workers said.
Protest against representation of the commissioner's spokesman
Specifically, the helpers reject four of Schiffl’s statements: There had been neither a ban on the trip to Rome nor did it need an explicit permission from the Order’s Dicastery.
In addition, Schiffl said that the talks about the closer circumstances of the stay of the sisters in Goldenstein were nearing completion. In fact, they would not have started yet.
The religious catastrophe had ordered that the lawyer of the sisters and two representatives of the helpers should be involved in these conversations. This has not yet happened, since these persons have not been contacted by the Apostolic Commissioner or his representative.
After all, the three sisters were also available in Rome. In the interview, Schiffl had said that the sisters had not been reachable for the assistant to the Apostolic Commissioner, the Salzburger Erzabt Jakob Sauer, since Tuesday.
It was known that the sisters had been in Rome with their helpers and in case of doubt they could have been reached at any time.
Vaticanist reveals his role in the trip to Rome
Meanwhile, the Vatican journalist Andreas Englisch described his role in the Rome trip of the sisters in "Zeit". He was "not completely uninvolved" in that. He promised the sisters during a visit to Goldenstein that he would bring them to Rome if they wanted to.
Listeners of his podcast would have provided a total of 7,500 euros for the trip in March. English has booked with the money airline tickets and rented accommodation.
The case of the three sisters has been in the media since last year: The three religious women had moved out of a Caritas retirement home in September and had subsequently gained access to their former monastery with the help of a key service.
The monastery of Goldenstein had passed into the possession of the Archdiocese of Salzburg and the Austrian Choir Lords' Foundation Reichersberg in 2022.
Meanwhile, the three sisters have built up a broad network that supports them in their old monastery they occupy.