The breakaway Poor Clares of Belorado in Spain have sold 320,000 euros in gold bars in recent months, seemingly to fund a newly opened restaurant and a puppy farm, according to local Spanish media.
The news comes just a few days after the Spanish Social Security Institute ordered the community to return thousands of euros in claimed pension money on behalf of a nun who died in April 2022.
Meanwhile, local authorities declared the excommunicated nuns to be in a “situation of social and/or economic vulnerability” - a designation that makes it more difficult for the Archdiocese of Burgos to evict them.
The now-former nuns declared their separation from the Catholic Church last May, when they released a 70-page “Catholic Manifesto” describing the Catholic Church after Vatican Council II as “illegitimate.”
They cited contradiction and ambiguity “from the throne of Peter,” as well as a real estate dispute with Church authorities, in which they said the Vatican had blocked the sale of an empty monastery in the nearby town of Derio, owned by the community.
Since then, the excommunicated sisters have unsuccessfully attempted to crowdfund online and have accused the Archbishop of Burgos of bankrupting the community.
Last July, it was reported that the nuns owed more 42,000 euros in unpaid invoices and almost 10,000 euros in unpaid salaries to convent staff — with the archdiocese saying it had not accessed all of the sisters’ financial information, and that the monastery might have had additional debt.
The former sisters also owed an undisclosed amount in a mortgage loan for the acquisition of a second monastery in Derio.
According to local reports, the sisters had been buying eccentric items such as high-quality jamón, silk sheets, laptops and cell phones, and even a fighting bull that had to be sold after it could not be tamed.
Local media have reported that the Poor Clares Federation of Spain has continued paying the basic expenses of the convents and the salaries of the convent staff - up to 225,000 euros - since their separation from the Catholic Church last year.
But despite the community’s claims that its archdiocese is trying to economically asphyxiate it, a new police investigation has revealed that the community’s superior recently sold more than 300,000 euros in gold bars.
According to Spanish media outlet ABC, the nuns had originally purchased 9.3 lbs of gold for 252,166.64 euros between July 30 and August 12, 2020.
The community’s sale of that gold - which took place incrementally over several months - flagged the attention of police in recent weeks.
The schismatic community acknowledged the purchase as an investment in a Feb. 5 statement, saying the sale was “an act of management of their own goods, agreed upon in the conventual chapter and reflected in the accounting books, supervised by the visitor of religious of the archdiocese of Burgos. It is an operation that followed all of the legal requirements.”
Spanish police flagged a suspicious transaction at that moment when the community’s superior, Laura García de Viedma, sold 3.8 pounds of gold bars and a “special edition American coin” for 130,000 euros.
The Archdiocese of Burgos said it received a notice from the National Police shortly thereafter which claimed García de Viedma acted as the “administrator of the property of the convent.”
According to the archdiocese, the only person authorized to buy and sell on behalf of the convent is Archbishop Mario Iceta of Burgos, who has been appointed as pontifical commissary for the community.
The community’s de facto superior, Laura García de Viedma, the archdiocesan Feb. 5 statement said, had no authority to sell assets.
García de Viedma “lacks any legal capacity whatsoever to administer or represent the canonical juridical entities Convent of Belorado and Convent of Derio, who own the gold bars, and not the associations while trying to justify the transactions due to being the “trustee of the entity,”(...) [but] lacks the legal capacity to act upon them.”
Since the archdiocese intervened in the bank accounts of the community in June, the community has used the personal bank accounts of García de Viedma - some of them opened months before the announcement of the schism - to solicit donations and payments from the sales of their chocolate business.
This is not the only financial run-in the schismatic community has had with Spanish authorities.
On February 5, local media reported that the Spanish Social Security Institute ordered the community to return thousands of euros in claimed pension money on behalf of a nun who died in April 2022.
Despite the sister’s death, the community continued to collect the monthly 400 euro pension payment until January 2024.
The community’s attorney said in a statement that the situation was likely due to administrative negligence from Spanish authorities as “deaths are registered in the Civil Registry and communicated afterward to Social Security. In April 2022, when said sister died, other three deaths occurred in Belorado in a short period of time, which may have caused confusion in the [public] administration.”
Despite these legal issues, the community had a recent legal victory as local authorities certified on Feb. 3 that the Belorado community was in a “situation of social and/or economic vulnerability,” which complicates the process of eviction of the community started by the Archdiocese of Burgos.
Still, local observers have questioned the declaration after the gold transactions were made public and after the sisters announced Feb. 7 the creation of the “first cloistered restaurant of Spain,” by renting a small hotel in Arriondas, a town in northern Spain.
The sisters also announced they had purchased a plot of land nearby to raise dogs and other animals.
According to the statement, three of the community’s nuns will move to the hotel and work in the kitchen of the restaurant, while they will hire staff for the other positions of the restaurant.
