A community of Poor Clares in northern Spain declared that they were leaving the Catholic Church and did not recognise any pope after Pius XII as legitimate.
The nuns from a monastery in Belorado, near Burgos, said they were under the patronage of Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco, a self-styled bishop excommunicated in 2019 and known for his fascist sympathies.
Local bishops expressed surprise at the announcement and said they had not received any official communication from the community.
In a statement issued last week, the nuns said they had been “persecuted” by Church authorities following a decision by the Vatican to “block” their request to sell a monastery they own in the Basque town Derio, which upset their plans to purchase another monastery in the village of Orduña, owned by the Diocese of Vitoria.
When they were refused permission to sell their property in Derio, the nuns asked a buyer from outside the community to pay the one million euros required to buy the Orduña monastery, with the promise of repayment once they had acquired the capital.
However, the Diocese of Vitoria rescinded its previous agreement to sell the Orduña monastery after it became concerned by the buyer’s identity, fearing that Rojas was funding the initiative. He has denied being the buyer.
Rojas was ordained by Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngo Dinh Thuc, a Vietnamese prelate who was excommunicated as a sedevacantist but later reconciled with the Church. Thuc carried out episcopal ordinations in El Palmar de Troya in the southern province of Andalucia, which established its own church, with four “popes” since 1978.
Rojas has declared his devotion to Francisco Franco. He appears in public in pre-conciliar episcopal robes, while his assistant and the supposed spokesman for the Poor Clares José Ceacero also wears traditional clerical dress, though he is known to be a prize-winning barman awarded for inventing the “Lucky Peach” gin cocktail.
The nuns’ superior Sr Isabel of the Trinity declared their schism in a five-page document sent to friends and benefactors and published on the convent website on 13 May. She said the blocked sale amounted to a conspiracy to dismantle “traditionally minded communities and keep their real estate to sell”.
She said the nuns would place themselves under Rojas’ jurisdiction, adding: “They are going to call us heretics and schismatics, crazy, and many more very disagreeable and calumnious things, but don’t believe them; at least this once, don’t let them fool you.”
The letter was accompanied by a 70-page “Catholic manifesto” detailing the supposed illegitimacy of the Church since the Second Vatican Council.
Last week, Sr Isabel appeared on Spanish television saying that the community no longer followed Pope Francis “because we don’t believe he is the Pope”.
She told the television host Ana Rosa Quintana, “We have fallen out of a kind of a daydream,” describing recent papacies as “a kind of fabrication dating back many years – basically a farce where a new Church has been assembled, taking us to where we are now. Forty years later there is hardly any trace of the Catholic Church as it has been since its foundation by our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In an interview filmed live from the convent in Belardo for the chat-show programme TardeAR, Sr Isabel added: “And so you end up asking ‘what is this now’: instead of God being at the heart of the Church, man is at the centre.”
Filmed sitting down surrounded by her nuns, with José Ceacero standing behind them, she continued: “We have been deeply let down by this usurpation and the fact people are still saying [Francis] is the Pope.”
She added: “We are fully convinced that we want people to wake up and listen – if they want to remain in the Church – to what we are saying, because it is important.”
The Diocese of Vitoria’s vicar for consecrated life Fr Manuel Gómez Tavira said Sr Isabel had “deceived” the nuns was trying to “stay in power”.
He said: “She has deceived them as though this was about a persecution. It’s a lie that the Archbishop of Burgos won’t let them sell. Mother Isabel is telling the nuns a lot of lies, which they are swallowing wholesale.”
However, Archbishop Mario Iceta of Burgos and other bishops responded cautiously, expressing “sorrow” but refraining from disciplinary measures.
A former member of the community expressed concern for the young and elderly nuns, who she said had been misled and manipulated.
“I was watched all the time so that I couldn’t talk to the older sisters,” Sr María Amparo told local reporters, describing how Rojas had first arrived at the convent declaring: “From now on I am the superior. I give the orders in the community, and you are under my jurisdiction.”
She also said the decision to leave the Church was taken “without a prior meeting of the chapter”.
After Sr Isabel’s announcement, one of the nuns posted a video on Instagram saying the community were not leaving the Church and promising an explanation for what had happened. She added that the nuns had not been kidnapped or taken from their families.
Further reports said the nuns were to be fined for running an illegal dog-breeding operation to supplement their income alongside a confectionary business. Rojas told a Spanish television host last week he had first encountered the nuns when buying chocolate truffles at their convent.
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