Three Austrian nuns in their 80's ran away from the retirement home where they were placed and went back to their former convent. Sister Bernadette, 88, Sister Regina, 86, and Sister Rita, 82, are the last three nuns at the Kloster Goldenstein convent in Elsbethen, just outside Salzburg.
They regained access with the help of former students and a locksmith. Church authorities are not happy - but the nuns are. "I am so pleased to be home," Sister Rita said. "I was always homesick at the care home. I am so happy and thankful to be back." The trio say they were taken out of the convent against their will in December 2023. "We weren't asked," Sister Bernadette said. "We had the right to stay here until the end of our lives and that was broken."
The three nuns have spent much of their lives at Schloss Goldenstein, a castle which has been a convent and a private girls' school since 1877. The school, which started accepting boys in 2017, is still functioning. Sister Bernadette attended the school herself, arriving as a teenager in 1948. One of her fellow students was the Austrian film actress Romy Schneider. Sister Regina arrived at the convent in 1958, and Sister Rita four years later. All three went on to work at the school as teachers for many years. Sister Regina was headmistress. But the numbers of nuns dwindled.
In 2022, the building was taken over by the Archdiocese of Salzburg and the Reichersberg Abbey, an Augustinian monastery. Provost Markus Grasl from the abbey became the nuns' superior. The community was officially dissolved at the beginning of 2024, and the remaining nuns were granted lifelong right of residence, as long as their health and mental capacity allowed.
In December 2023, the decision was made to transfer them to a Catholic care home, where they were unhappy. At the beginning of September, Sister Bernadette, Sister Rita and Sister Regina moved back, helped by a group of former students. "I have been obedient all my life, but it was too much," Sister Bernadette said. They packed up a few belongings and came back to the convent. The locks to their former apartments had been changed so a locksmith was called.
When they got into the convent, there was no electricity or water. In a statement, Provost Grasl said the nuns' decision to return to the convent was "completely incomprehensible" and "an escalation." "The rooms in the convent are no longer usable and in no way meet the requirements for proper care," he said. He claimed the nuns' "precarious health conditions" meant "that independent living at Goldenstein Convent was no longer possible". Grasl said the old people's home had provided them with "absolutely essential, professional, and good medical care". Many of the nuns' wishes about the future of the convent had been taken into account, he added, including the continuation of the school.
Provost Markus Grasl, from nearby Reichersberg Abbey, has accused them of “breaking the vow of obedience” they made when they entered the order, by illegally occupying their castle home, and says they are living in “conditions too precarious” for their advanced ages. Removing them from the convent and placing them in more suitable accommodation, he says, was a necessary act of care and had been negotiated with the sisters in advance.
But the nuns dispute this and are sticking to their guns, building up an international fanclub as they do so. More than 50,000 people are now following them on social media, with followers given a stream of daily insights into the lives of the octogenarian religious rebels. They say that when they left the convent in 2023, having no idea they were not meant to return, they left most of their possessions behind. On returning after 20 months, they suspected the convent had been ransacked in their absence.
Gone too were their recipe books, photo albums, teaching notes, orthopedic shoes, birth and school certificates – not to mention letters and photographs from former pupils. A plastic bag of money kept in a wardrobe, which the nuns say they used for incidentals, has also disappeared. The bank accounts to which they once had access as a community, into which their wages had been paid, as well as Bernadette’s inheritance from her mother, are no longer accessible. The money, they and their supporters argue, could be used to pay for round-the-clock care in the convent.
Grasl has not responded to the nuns’ accusations in public but appointed a PR crisis manager to deal with what has quickly turned into a public relations disaster for the Catholic church in Austria. Grasl rejected the nuns’ claims that they had been tricked into signing anything against their will, and he denied that possessions had been removed, saying the rooms had “only been cleared of spoiled food and rubbish.” The nuns “should have no private possessions in that sense anyway, according to their vows. Anything they have belongs to the community,” he said, including the bank accounts,
Nevertheless, the three nuns are now settling back in to their former home. Electricity and water connections have now been partially restored, supporters are bringing food and groceries, and they have been seen by doctors. There is a steady stream of visitors, many of whom are their former students.
One of them, Sophie Tauscher, said the nuns belong at the convent. "Goldenstein without the nuns is just not possible. When they need us, they just have to call us and we will be there, for sure. The nuns here changed so many lives in such a good way." Videos of the nuns have been posted on Instagram, at prayer, at Mass, at lunch and climbing down the steep staircase. They say their old stair lift was ripped out after they were taken away. But the nuns say they are determined to stay. "Before I die in that old people's home, I would rather go to a meadow and enter eternity that way," said Sister Bernadette.
Sister Rita bemoaned the removal of the flower beds that once lined the burial plots of the order's nuns going back to the 1880's, which the trio had habitually tended. “I suppose they wanted to more easily be able to mow the grass,” she said. “But it’s as if they’re trying to erase all trace of us”.
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