Rebel Nuns Arrested Over Claims They Sold the Church’s Sacred Art From a Convent They Were Told to Leave

• Two excommunicated nuns were detained in Spain
• Police searched their Belorado convent over alleged sales of sacred art
• An antiquarian suspected of receiving items was also released
• The nuns had stayed despite an earlier court eviction order

Two excommunicated nuns from the Order of Saint Clare were detained in Spain in November 2025 as investigators looked into whether religious artworks belonging to the Catholic Church had been sold, the Jamaica Observer reported, citing AFP.

The women belong to a group of nine who split from the Vatican in May 2024 amid property disputes and doctrinal disagreements. They have continued to occupy a 15th-century convent in Belorado, northern Spain, even after the Archbishopric of Burgos told them to leave following their excommunication and a court ordered their eviction earlier in 2025. The nuns appealed that decision.

Spain’s Civil Guard searched the convent to establish whether pieces of sacred art had been sold irregularly. A court in Briviesca then ordered the provisional release of the two former nuns, who are under investigation for misappropriation of cultural heritage assets. An antiquarian suspected of receiving the items was also released. The nuns rejected the allegations: “We have committed no crime, and we have nothing to hide.”

The group follows an excommunicated ultra-conservative priest who rejects the validity of all popes since 1958.

The case moves the dispute from the building itself to what is inside it. Old churches and convents often hold paintings, statues, furniture and fittings worth a great deal, and when a congregation splits or a property sits in limbo, those contents are easy to overlook, move or sell.

Jamaican churches hold their own heritage items, from colonial-era memorial plaques and pipe organs to bells and communion silver. Trustees should keep an up-to-date inventory with photographs, record who owns each item and note heritage protections. That protects the church if leadership changes or a congregation breaks away, and it gives insurers and buyers of any former church property a clear record of what goes with the building and what does not.

Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com