The Confederation of Poor Clares of Spain and Portugal has disassociated itself from the Poor Clare nuns of Belorado and Orduña (Burgos) who last week announced that they were breaking with the Catholic Church due to the “persecution” they suffer. This religious community declared to pass under the guardianship and jurisdiction of the false bishop Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco, excommunicated in 2019, and the association called Pía Unión Sancti Pauli Apostoli.
“We are totally disassociated from the decision made by these sisters and we have nothing to do with those options. They are exclusively from the monastery of Belorado-Orduña”, indicates the Confederal Coordinator in a statement, in which she expresses her “fidelity” to the “way of life just as Clara and Francisco wanted”.
The text of the Poor Clares of Spain and Portugal points out that this fidelity “supposes communion with the teachings of the Church,” which they profess to be “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” “She You cannot be a Poor Clare outside of this obedience,” she adds.
The decision of the sisters of the monastery of Belorado and Orduña was transmitted through a letter signed by the abbess and with a “manifesto” that, as they point out, “corresponds to that advocated by those who deny the validity of the Vatican Council.” II”.
“These events have generated deep pain and consternation in the Poor Clare sisters of Spain and Portugal and in our entire order, as well as in the Christian faithful, and have been a great scandal for many,” the text notes.
The statement concludes that if the nuns of Belorado “recognize their error and return to communion with the Catholic Church and the Order of Saint Clare”, the Confederation of Poor Clares of Spain and Portugal “shows willingness to welcome them again.”
On Tuesday, the apostolic nuncio in Spain, Bernardito Auza, warned in a veiled manner and without a direct allusion to the conflict created by the Poor Clares of Belorado, that religious life cannot be lived without the sense of obedience and warned about “the lack of reality ” and the “disconnection” that can divert members of a community from a sense of service.
Auza spoke with a speech at the opening ceremony of the 30th General Assembly of the Conference of Religious (Confer). “May religious life not stumble in its experience due to this lack of reality, due to a disconnection that is always an opportunity to divert the superior and the members of a community from the key to the meaning of service,” he claimed.