Three Little Nuns Who All Unwary ...

I was charmed last week to hear of three elderly nuns in

The three runaway nuns.

Austria who had, with some assistance, run away from the retirement home where they had been placed after the convent where they had always lived, was deemed unsafe for them. The three are Sisters Bernadette, 88, Regina, 86 and Rita, almost 82, and their superior, Provost Markus Grasl, from nearby Reichersberg Abbey, clearly felt a duty of care in not allowing three frail octogenarians to live independently in a huge but crumbling convent, the imposing Schloss Goldenstein, near Elsebethan near Salzburg. He also had strong doubts about the fading powers of the three ladies and subsequently claimed the move had been worked out with the sisters in advance though the nuns dispute this.

Schloss Goldenstein, near Elsebethan, Salzburg.

A former pupil of theirs, Christina Wirtenberger, has organised their return and assists them still, with others, daily in their newly-reclaimed home. Wirtenberger, a retired advertising director, started boarding at the convent school when she was 10 in 1970, and has defended her current unrepentant actions. The nuns had been transferred to the care home in late 2023 with the promise that their stay would be short term but after two years in situ and no visible signs of their leaving, the nuns remained deeply unhappy and their evident unhappiness spurred Wirtenberger and other supporters, to action. With the help of a lawyer and sympathetic parishioners, and accompanied by a handful of journalists, all committed to secrecy, the nuns were secretly removed from the care home and smuggled back to their familiar cloisters. A locksmith, an electrician and a plumber were all mysteriously on hand during the removal, to reconnect all services in the convent.

Christina Wirtenberger

Sister Rita, Ritsch, the keen gardener.

'Berna', Sister Bernadette, reputedly the strictest.
 At the convent for seven decades as pupil and teacher.

Until their removal, Regina, known affectionately by her former pupils as ‘Regi’ had been at the convent since 1959 and served as headmistress. She had taught six subjects and supervised the convent accounts. Rita, known as ‘Ritsch’, had a bubbly personality and was a keen gardener; she returned to the convent in 1969 permanently, after sporadic spells earlier, in residence. Bernadette, ‘Berna’, had been there the longest, for more than seven decades, first as a pupil, later as a teacher who also did much of the cooking and necessary sewing repairs. Over the period when the trio joined the convent, established over 150 years ago, there had been around 30 resident nuns but over the years, recruitment languished and numbers dwindled finally leaving just our trio. They believed that the contract each had signed enshrined their right to remain in the convent for the rest of their lives.  Stabilitas Loci is the vow of permanence which a person entering holy orders is required to make, expressing a commitment to both the physical location and a lifelong spiritual dedication to the order and the community.

Nuns on the run.

Sister Regina, Regi, once taught Maths and
calligraphy and supervised the accounts.
She also served as headmistress.

The nuns left most of their personal possessions behind when they were first moved out [temporarily, they believed] and twenty months later, on their return, the convent appeared to have been ransacked. The stair lift, which permitted them to reach the fourth floor living quarters, was missing as were their recipe books, photo albums, teaching notes, orthopaedic shoes, birth and school certificates. Also gone were the treasured letters and photos from former students including the film actor, Romy Schneider who attended from1949-1953 when she was a classmate of Bernadette, and who claimed that her early dramatic promise had been nurtured by the convent's gifted drama teacher, Sister Augustine.

The bank accounts to which they had had community access and into which their wages were paid, and which guarded Bernadette’s inheritance from her mother, were no longer accessible to them. Provost Grasl has appointed a P.R. crisis manager to deal with the complex situation which has, in fact, turned into a P.R. disaster for the Catholic church in Austria. A church spokesman, Harald Schiffl, claimed that the church had spent ‘years’ negotiating with the three Sisters about their terms of departure, denying

Elisabeth von Trapp.

that they had been tricked into signing the contract as the nuns claimed. Furthermore, the church insisted that the nuns had now broken their sacred vows of obedience while it was acting out of charity.

At prayer, in the convent chapel.

Additionally, by 2023, conditions at the cloister had become ‘too precarious’ for the nuns to remain there and, he added, that they, ‘the Three’, in any case, can have no private possessions according to their vows. Anything they have, belongs to the community, including the bank accounts. “The provost is, by decree, responsible for the entire cloister property, including all the finances.”

Meanwhile, the nuns remain defiant, confident in their power based on the international fan club they have built up via social media with followers given a daily stream of insights into the lives of the three escapees. Among their well-wishers is the American folk singer, Elisabeth von Trapp, granddaughter of Maria von Trapp, an erstwhile novice whose story inspired ‘The Sound of Music.” Elisabeth visited the three, inevitably bringing more publicity as well as roses and telling them to stay 

Physical frailty but emotional strength.

brave. More than 50,000 vocal admirers are now following the Sisters on Instagram and they have a network of about 200 helpers including those providing security and others who cook their meals, as well as voluntary doctors and nurses offering regular medical care. Despite the undoubted charm of this story, it is relevant to point out the totality of the experience of the three sisters. Sister Rita has bemoaned the removal of the flower beds that once lined the graveyard plots, in use since the 1880s and which the trio had habitually tended. "I suppose they wanted to be able, more easily to mow the grass", she said. "But it's as if they're trying to erase all trace of us." In expressing the nuns' unfiltered feelings of hurt after a lifetime of service and devotion to the church, this must be the saddest comment of all and one to which the Catholic Church in Austria must surely respond.