BERLIN — Since breaking into their convent near Salzburg, Austria, Sisters Bernadette, Regina and Rita have been busy.
On their Instagram account, Rita, 82, can be seen rushing about the cloisters and dabbling in boxing lessons. Sister Regina, 86, has gotten so used to climbing four flights of stairs, she forgets to take the recently donated stair lift. And Sister Bernadette, 88, regularly shares sharp-witted observations about matters both sacred and secular over a ritual cup of coffee.
The octogenarian nuns made headlines across the world this fall after staging an escape from the care home they say church authorities took them to against their will.
The Augustinian nuns have the support of the local community and a growing flock of more than 185,000 Instagram followers.
Yet they are still essentially squatting. Before the church authorities moved the nuns into care almost two years ago, the local abbey and Archdiocese of Salzburg acquired the convent. The sisters say they were not aware they were signing away what they understood to be their lifelong right to remain in the cloister.
On Friday, their superior, Provost Markus Grasl from Reichersberg Abbey, announced that the sisters can stay. But his offer comes with conditions: The nuns must cease all social media activities, stop talking to the press and forgo seeking legal advice. The nuns have rejected the proposal, and now Grasl has called on the Vatican to intercede.
In a statement released Friday, the nuns said the provost's offer is nothing short of a gag order.
Speaking via Instagram, Sister Regina said, "We can't agree to this deal. Without the media, we'd have been silenced."
Sister Bernadette told Instagram followers: "We need to resolve this but any agreement we reach must be in accordance with God's will and shaped by human reason."
Canon law scholar and priest Wolfgang Rothe tells NPR the deal is neither reasonable nor humane and that it has no legal basis in either church or state laws. "The provost's demands are simply unlawful; he seeks to restrict the sisters to such an extent that is nothing less than a violation of their human rights."
The provost's proposed agreement — which NPR has seen — also bans laypeople from entering the cloisters, including the sisters' helpers, many of whom they've known for decades and on whom the nuns now depend for help.
Speaking to NPR on Monday, the provost's spokesperson, crisis PR manager Harald Schiffl, said that the provost does not understand why the nuns reject his offer and that, in response, he has requested the Vatican authorities responsible for religious orders to step in.
The Vatican has not commented on the situation. So while they await news from Rome, the sisters continue to follow the papal Instagram account.
Schiffl says the terms relating to the nuns' social media use are reasonable: "The abbey wishes to discontinue the sisters' social media accounts because what they show has very little to do with real religious life."
In an interview with NPR, Sister Bernadette points out that Grasl, the provost, is just as media-savvy as she and her fellow nuns are. She mentions, for example, Grasl's 2022 photo shoot with an Austrian TV chef.
"The provost and the church invite journalists to the big parties they throw," Bernadette says. "It helps raise money. Why shouldn't we do the same?"
The provost's promise to allow the sisters to remain in the convent is caveated by the clause "until further notice."
Rothe says there is nothing in the proposal that would stop the provost from removing the sisters a second time. "Once again, the provost is trying to exert pressure to achieve something that is in his interest, without taking the sisters' interests into account or even asking what the sisters want."
The provost's spokesperson Schiffl says, "I cannot say how to resolve this; it is now up to Rome."
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