BERLIN – Three octogenarian Austrian nuns who captured headlines last year when they staged an escape from their care home and broke back into their old convent are in Rome for the very first time.
Sisters Rita, Bernadette and Regina joined tens of thousands of other visitors at St. Peter's Square for a general audience with Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday morning.
The sisters' aide Christina Wirtenberger — who has known them since she was a pupil in the convent's adjoining school — told NPR that they boarded a plane for Rome "in secret" amid an ongoing dispute with the local provost, Markus Grasl.
In a statement sent to NPR by the provost's spokesperson Harald Schiffl, Grasl expressed concern about what appeared to be the sisters' sudden disappearance on Tuesday night and bafflement over why they kept their flight to Rome under wraps.
The sisters have been at odds with the provost — who is also their superior — since returning to their convent last September in Schloss Goldenstein near Salzburg.
Grasl accused the sisters of breaking their vow of obedience when they left the care home, arguing that the conditions in the convent are unsuitable for them. The sisters accuse the provost of putting them in a care home against their will.
Both parties appealed to the Vatican late last year to make a decision over the sisters' right to remain. Sisters Bernadette, Rita and Regina also requested that the provost be relieved of his duties to them.
Munich-based canon law scholar Wolfgang Rothe — who has been advising the nuns — told NPR that the Vatican Dicastery responsible for religious orders has decided in the sisters' favor and that they can remain at the convent. The Vatican has not yet responded to NPR's request for comment.
Rothe also told NPR that the Vatican appointed Abbot Jakob Auer as an assistant to Provost Grasl to take care of the sisters' needs — an appointment confirmed by Schiffl, Grasl's spokesperson.
In the statement Schiffl sent to NPR on Wednesday, he quotes Auer as saying, "We were on the verge of finalizing an agreement regarding the sisters' continued stay at Schloss Goldenstein" and that since Tuesday, he has been "unable to reach the sisters" and "fear[s] that they are being deliberately kept away from me," adding that "we are deeply concerned about the sisters' well-being."
Much to their surprise, the sisters became novice social media influencers last year with an Instagram following of nearly 300,000 — the kind of publicity Wirtenberger told NPR last October played a vital role in ensuring the provost did not try and remove them from the convent. The Instagram account — originally called nonnen_goldenstein — detailed what looked like the sisters' high jinks and capers, including Sister Rita taking boxing lessons or sliding down the convent staircase on a mattress.
Following what are reported to be internal disputes among the volunteers helping the sisters, the owner of the initial Instagram account was ordered by an Austrian court last month to stop posting in the name of the nuns. The sisters say the volunteer who ran the account did not seek their express permission prior to posting.
Since then, that account — now named church_fluencer — has published posts questioning the welfare of the sisters, even suggesting that they have been taken to Rome against their will.
Wirtenberger, who remains at the nuns' sides, has launched a new Instagram account called realnonnengoldenstein.
Conflicting posts about the sisters and accusations from various sides highlight how vulnerable the elderly can be when dependent on the help of others. But a photograph sent to NPR from Rome and footage posted to the new Instagram account show sisters Rita, Regina and Bernadette sitting in wheelchairs in St. Peter's Square, grinning from ear to ear as they wait for the papal blessing.
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