The General Minister of the Order of Friars Minor, Fra Massimo Fusarelli OFM, asked the former Poor Clare nuns of Belorado to stop wearing the traditional “habit of Saint Francis and Saint Clare”, after decreeing their excommunication and expulsion from consecrated life. .
In a statement Published on the Franciscan website, dated June 24, and addressed to the President of the Federation of Poor Clare Sisters of Aránzazu, the superior general noted that this “is a very sad moment and I myself feel its gravity and weight.” . I share your confusion and pain, and I feel that for our entire Order it is a moment that forces us to pray and reflect.”
Receive the main news from ACI Prensa by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channels today:
“First of all, with prayer we want to accompany these sisters who have chosen to abandon the Catholic Church, who have fallen into a distorted and seriously misleading reading of the last seventy years of the life of the Church,” he highlighted.
“Now, the 10 sisters are no longer Poor Clares or religious and it would be convenient for them to leave the habit of Saint Francis and Saint Clare, even so, I do not think they will do so,” stressed the Franciscan General Minister.
“We must make it clear to everyone that they are no longer Poor Clares, although the doors of our hearts and our family remain open to them,” he said.
On May 13, 2024, the community of Poor Clare sisters of the Monasteries of Belorado and Orduña, respectively in the Archdiocese of Burgos and the Diocese of Vitoria (Spain), published a manifesto and a letter in which they announced that they were leaving the Catholic Church. to place himself under the authority of the excommunicated false bishop Pablo de Rojas.
At the end of May, the Vatican appointed the Archbishop of Burgos, Mons. Mario Iceta, Pontifical Commissioner. When he began to take action, the nuns decided to take the issue to civil justice, where it is now.
At the beginning of June, the Archbishopric of Burgos formally informed the nuns that they had to appear before the Ecclesiastical Court of Burgos to answer for the crime of schism, typified in canon 751 of the Code of Canon Law and punishable by the penalty of excommunication. .
The deadline expired on Friday, June 21, 2024 and that day the nuns reiterated their willingness to separate from the Catholic Church.
The Code of Canon Law specifies that schism is ““the rejection of subjection to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” The penalty for this crime is excommunication, the most severe that exists in the Catholic Church.
On June 22, the Archdiocese of Burgos decreed the penalty of excommunication and expulsion for the now 10 former schismatic Poor Clare nuns. On Monday the 24th he urged them to leave the Belorado monastery, and on the 26th he reminded them that they are not the legitimate owners of it.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.