From breaking with the Vatican to ending up arrested: the case of the former abbess of Belorado
The convent of the cloistered nuns stirred up controversy months ago after announcing that it was breaking with the Vatican.
BarcelonaThe Civil Guard arrested Laura García de Viedma, the former abbess of the Belorado convent in the province of Burgos, on Thursday. The arrest followed a search ordered by the Briviesca court, which is investigating her involvement in the sale of artwork from the controversial monastery, according to sources close to the investigation consulted by EFE. The search concluded this afternoon with the arrest of the former abbess as part of an investigation into the misappropriation and receiving of stolen historical artifacts from the convent. The courts are continuing their preliminary investigation following a complaint filed by someone not affiliated with the convent.
Just last week, the courts in Bilbao served the eviction notice to the former nuns of Belorado, ordering them to vacate the Urduña monastery (Vizcaya), also owned by the same order. The five elderly nuns who were not excommunicated currently reside there along with some younger nuns.
The former Poor Clare nuns of Belorado have at least two open criminal cases: one for the sale of 1.7 kilos of gold for 121,000 euros and the other for several counts of fraud.
This same community of nuns was, in fact, excommunicated in the summer of 2014 after announcing their break with the Vatican and their refusal to obey the mandate of then-Pope Francis. The events date back to May, when the former nuns published a manifesto signed by the abbess (now under arrest) in which they declared their departure from the Catholic Church. Until then, this community had been cloistered Poor Clares, but from that point on, they asserted their rejection of the Second Vatican Council and their belief that all popes since Pius XII, including Pope Francis, were heretics. To finalize their departure, they placed themselves under the jurisdiction of a religious community led by Pablo de Rojas, a self-proclaimed bishop excommunicated in 2019, who moved into the convent along with his acolyte, José Ceacero, the nuns' spiritual guide and self-appointed spokesperson. The real reason for the Belorado nuns' break with the Church was a real estate deal: they wanted to sell the Derio convent and buy the Urduña convent, but the Holy See intervened.