Defiant nuns flee Austrian care home for their abandoned convent in the Alps

Three Austrian nuns of their 80s have run away from the outdated individuals’s dwelling the place they had been positioned and gone again to their former convent.

Sister Bernadette, 88, Sister Regina, 86, and Sister Rita, 82, are the final three nuns on the Kloster Goldenstein convent in Elsbethen, simply outdoors Salzburg.

They regained entry with the assistance of former college students and a locksmith.

Church authorities should not completely satisfied – however the nuns are.

“I’m so happy to be dwelling,” Sister Rita mentioned. “I used to be all the time homesick on the care dwelling. I’m so completely satisfied and grateful to be again.”

The trio say they had been taken out of the convent in opposition to their will in December 2023.

“We weren’t requested,” Sister Bernadette mentioned. “We had the precise to remain right here till the top of our lives and that was damaged.”

The three nuns have spent a lot of their lives at Schloss Goldenstein, a fortress which has been a convent and a personal women’ faculty since 1877. The college, which began accepting boys in 2017, continues to be functioning.

Sister Bernadette attended the varsity herself, arriving as a youngster in 1948. One among her fellow college students was the Austrian movie actress Romy Schneider.

Sister Regina arrived on the convent in 1958, and Sister Rita 4 years later.

All three went on to work on the faculty as academics for a few years. Sister Regina was headmistress.

However the numbers of nuns dwindled.

In 2022, the constructing was taken over by the the Archdiocese of Salzburg and the Reichersberg Abbey, an Augustinian monastery. Provost Markus Grasl from the abbey turned the nuns’ superior.

The group was formally dissolved firstly of 2024, and the remaining nuns had been granted lifelong proper of residence, so long as their well being and psychological capability allowed.

In December 2023, the choice was made to switch them to a Catholic care dwelling, the place they had been sad.

In the beginning of September, Sister Bernadette, Sister Rita and Sister Regina moved again, helped by a bunch of former college students.

“I’ve been obedient all my life, but it surely was an excessive amount of,” Sister Bernadette mentioned.

They packed up a number of belongings and got here again to the convent. The locks to their former flats had been modified so a locksmith was known as.

After they first arrived, there was no electrical energy or water.

In a press release, Provost Grasl mentioned the nuns’ choice to return to the convent was “utterly incomprehensible” and “an escalation”.

“The rooms within the convent are not usable and on no account meet the necessities for correct care,” he mentioned.

He mentioned the nuns’ “precarious well being situations” meant “that unbiased dwelling at Goldenstein Convent was not attainable”.

Grasl mentioned the outdated individuals’s dwelling had supplied them with “completely important, skilled, and good medical care”.

Lots of the nuns’ needs about the way forward for the convent had been taken into consideration, he added, together with the continuation of the varsity.

The three nuns are settling again in to their former dwelling.

Electrical energy and water connections have now been partially restored, supporters are bringing meals and groceries, and so they have been seen by medical doctors.

There’s a regular stream of tourists, a lot of whom are their former college students.

One among them, Sophie Tauscher, mentioned the nuns belong on the convent. “Goldenstein with out the nuns is simply not attainable.”

“After they want us, they simply need to name us and we can be there, for positive. The nuns right here modified so many lives in such a great way.”

Alisha, one other pupil mentioned the nuns all the time recognised outdated pupils.

Movies of the nuns have been posted on Instagram, at prayer, at Mass, at lunch and climbing down the steep staircase.

They are saying their outdated stairlift was ripped out after they had been taken away.

The nuns say they’re decided to remain.

“Earlier than I die in that outdated individuals’s dwelling, I might quite go to a meadow and enter eternity that manner,” mentioned Sister Bernadette.