Defiant nuns flee Austrian care dwelling for his or her deserted convent within the Alps

Three Austrian nuns of their 80s have run away from the outdated folks’s dwelling the place they had been positioned and gone again to their former convent.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 aren’t glad – however the nuns are.

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

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

“We weren’t requested,” Sister Bernadette stated. “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 citadel which has been a convent and a non-public women’ college since 1877. The college, which began accepting boys in 2017, continues to be functioning.

Sister Bernadette attended the varsity herself, arriving as a teen 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 college 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 neighborhood was formally dissolved at the start 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, nevertheless it was an excessive amount of,” Sister Bernadette stated.

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

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

In an announcement, Provost Grasl stated the nuns’ determination to return to the convent was “fully incomprehensible” and “an escalation”.

“The rooms within the convent are not usable and under no circumstances meet the necessities for correct care,” he stated.

He stated the nuns’ “precarious well being circumstances” meant “that unbiased residing at Goldenstein Convent was not potential”.

Grasl stated the outdated folks’s dwelling had supplied them with “completely important, skilled, and good medical care”.

Most 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 holiday makers, lots of whom are their former college students.

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

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

Alisha, one other scholar stated 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 folks’s dwelling, I’d moderately go to a meadow and enter eternity that method,” stated Sister Bernadette.