(OSV News) — Spain’s Archdiocese of Burgos said it is “studying the best way to evict the ex-religious women” after rebel nuns and their superior were excommunicated for rejecting the Catholic Church’s authority. Earlier the archdiocese threatened legal action against the nuns.
In an interview published July 11 in Spanish Catholic media Alfa y Omega, Archbishop Mario Iceta Gavicagogeascoa of Burgos said that the issue, dubbed the religious “soap opera” in Spain, caught the local church by surprise.
“Neither the delegate for consecrated life in Burgos nor the vicar for consecrated life in (the Diocese of) Vitoria had observed any sign that would show what had happened in just one month,” Archbishop Iceta told Alfa y Omega.
“In accusing us of ‘despicable coercion,'” the former abbess is “recklessly disregarding the truth,” the northern archdiocese’s management committee said in a statement, adding that the order is trying to impute possible criminal acts to the archdiocese and “legal services will evaluate these manifestations and will act accordingly.”
The archdiocese “requested all legal, fiscal, economic … information needed for correctly administering the (nuns’) monastery,” but the requests “were repeatedly ignored, preventing any type of communication.”
Conflict intensifies with Poor Clare nuns
The statement was issued as conflict intensified with defrocked members of the Order of St. Clare, known as Poor Clares, from Belorado, who published a “manifesto” May 13, bitterly denouncing the pope and modern church reforms. Besides their Belorado monastery in the archdiocese, the nuns also have a monastery in Orduña, located in the Vitoria Diocese.
The secretary-general of the Spanish bishops’ conference, Auxiliary Bishop Francisco César García Magán of Toledo, told journalists July 4 the dispute sounded “like something from the Middle Ages,” but said he believed the Burgos Archdiocese was “acting with clarity, charity and with patience, a lot of patience.”
The committee said it had been tasked by Archbishop Iceta with “preserving the patrimony” of the Belorado convent, only to be rebuffed with claims of “persecution” by the excommunicated nuns and their superior, Laura García de Viedma.
Concerns over impact on the Spanish Church
Meanwhile, a leading Catholic commentator told OSV News the dispute risked damaging the Spanish church, already preoccupied with sexual abuse accusations and anti-clerical government reforms.
“If the ex-abbess is deposed, some ex-nuns could return to Rome and build bridges to sustain their religious life,” said Jesús Bastante Liébana, chief editor of Spain’s online Catholic Religión Digital news agency.
“Whatever the outcome, the Spanish church will come out worse, in both external image and internal cohesion,” he said. “We don’t see complex schisms like this every day — but when they occur, everyone loses.”
The Belorado convent and Poor Clares
The Belorado convent, 75 miles northeast of Burgos, forms part of the 20,000-strong worldwide Poor Clares order, founded in 1212 as a branch of the Franciscans by St Clare of Assisi (1194-1253).
In their 70-page “manifesto,” the nuns said they were leaving the “conciliar church,” believing no pope after Pius XII (1876-1958), who headed the church from 1939 to 1958, had been legitimate, and that they would accept “tutelage and jurisdiction” instead from Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco, a traditionalist self-styled bishop excommunicated in 2019.
They added that the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council had “stolen the faith of billions of believers,” while the Catholic Church’s 1992 catechism was also “heretical, anti-canonical, illicit and invalid,” with only “contradictions, doubtful and confusing language, ambiguity and gaps in clear doctrine” emerging from the Vatican under Pope Francis.
Among other complaints, the nuns said the Vatican had blocked their attempt to raise funds by selling an empty convent at Derio.
However, the claims were rejected by the archdiocese, which said the Poor Clares had expressed no “discomfort” or “disagreement” when Archbishop Iceta visited their community twice — in 2021 and 2023.
Excommunication and response
A “latae sententiae” excommunication decree was delivered to each of the 10 nuns June 22 after they refused to appear before a church tribunal, telling Archbishop Iceta they had left the church “freely, voluntarily and decisively.”
Speaking at a June 24 press conference in Burgos, Archbishop Iceta said he had asked the rebels to the leave the Santa Clara de Belorado convent, but without “setting a deadline,” under property provisions in Spain’s 1976 agreements with the Holy See, and would initiate appropriate “legal actions” if they refused.
“Excommunication is always reversible. … The church wants them to return, I pray for their return and we await them with open arms,” the archbishop said.
“If they are readmitted into the Catholic Church, we will help them on the path of return and reintegration.”
In a follow-up June 26 statement, the Poor Clares said they had decided to end any link with Rojas Sánchez, the self-styled bishop, but would defend their “status as legitimate owners” of the Belorado convent and resist “eviction,” which they claim the archdiocese is trying to “force.”
Complex dynamics of conflict
In an interview with OSV News, Bastante Liébana said property quarrels and “internal power disputes” had figured into the conflict, alongside “spiritual concerns,” adding that he believed Archbishop Iceta had acted “proportionately, trying not to break links until this became inevitable.”
“The involvement of some fake bishop has added yet more color to the plot,” the Catholic editor-in-chief said.
“But we must remember,” he added, “there’s strong disaffection towards Pope Francis and Vatican II in some sectors of the Spanish church, not least among new conservative movements who’ve contributed to a progressive radicalisation of Spanish politics.”
Support from the Vatican and the broader implications
An archdiocesan source told OSV News that Archbishop Iceta had been in touch with the Vatican over the conflict and felt “supported by the Holy See,” adding that Bishop Luis Ángel de las Heras Berzal of León, chairman of the Spanish bishops’ Commission for Consecrated Life, had offered to mediate in a bid to “avoid extreme positions and polarizations.”
Meanwhile, Bastante Liébana said Spanish society viewed the dispute as “a soap opera, with ever more tangled twists,” but added that most Catholics were “pained” at the current media storm.
“A large section of Spanish Catholicism wishes to return to previous times — 11 years on, it still views Francis’s pontificate as a spring sandstorm before the return of an ecclesial winter,” he told OSV News.
“The pope has placed the problem in Archbishop Iceta’s hands, so other bishops are leaving him to it — apparently forgetting that an underlying issue is the loneliness of religious life, which affects other dioceses as well.”
Reflections on the crisis
In a June 24 message, the Franciscan order’s Rome-based minister general, Father Massimo Fusarelli, agreed the dispute was a reminder of “nostalgic and traditionalist tendencies present in our church,” adding that he regretted the excommunicated Poor Clares had “fallen into a distorted and gravely misleading reading of the last 70 years of the Church’s life.”
In his July 11 interview with Alfa y Omega, Archbishop Iceta said that “every crisis situation always entails reflection.”
He added that he asked himself, “How can the care and accompaniment of monasteries be improved? How is the maturity of the people adequate? What is the differentiated care given to some monasteries and others, in virtue of the particular situations of each one of them? These are questions that must be asked. The case deserves a reflection on what elements we can improve, looking more at what signs there may be that trigger warning signals that require more special and specific care.”
