Spanish
The defense of the community of Spanish nuns excommunicated for confronting the Catholic hierarchy asked the court that has to rule on their case to stop the eviction scheduled for October 3 from the monastery of Belorado (Burgos, central Spain) where they live.
The lawyer for the exclaresses, Florentino Aláez, explained to EFE this Friday that they expected justice to suspend their expulsion from the monastery due to the appeal filed at the beginning of September, but they have expressly requested that the eviction not take place.
The nuns of the order of Poor Clares - eight in total - broke with the Vatican after the Church prevented them from selling a monastery to buy another.
This disagreement led them to decide to place themselves under the tutelage of Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco, a Catholic excommunicated in July 2019 and founder of the sect Pía Unión de San Pablo Apóstol.
The decision caused the schism and the confrontation has led to several cross-complaints in court, including over the ownership of the monastery, where the eight former nuns, excommunicated in June 2024, continue to reside.
Failure against the ex-nuns
The Archbishopric of Burgos filed a complaint against the ex-religious, considering that the nuns no longer belong to the religious community of the Santa Clara monastery in Belorado, which still exists and whose legal representative is the Archbishop of Burgos, Mario Iceta, as pontifical commissioner.
According to the Archbishopric, when the exclauses decided to leave the Catholic Church "without anyone coercing or obliging them," they lost their capacity for management and administration over the monastery and its assets.
On July 31st, a court of first instance issued a ruling in which it sided with the Catholic Church, ordering the former nuns to vacate the monastery with the threat of eviction if they did not do so voluntarily, as their ownership of the cenobio had not been proven.
A period of 20 working days would then open to appeal the sentence, not counting August, which is a non-working month for the justice system, so the former nuns have until September 29, according to their lawyer.
The lawyer believes that the eviction next Friday is only effective if the former nuns do not appeal the sentence, but with a first appeal already in place and the other seven appeals being filed this coming Monday, they cannot be evicted without the Provincial Court having ruled on them.
