Europe

Two excommunicated nuns still occupying a 15th-century convent in Belorado, Spain were detained and later provisionally released amid an investigation into whether sacred art belonging to the Catholic Church was sold irregularly.

The Diocese of Hasselt will repurpose four churches in Maasmechelen, Belgium, starting with Meeswijk, citing falling attendance, fewer priests and rising maintenance costs, with new uses to be decided with residents over several years.

A Spanish court ordered nine nuns who broke with the Vatican to leave their 15th-century convent in Belorado, ruling that the Church held valid ownership documents while the nuns showed no legal title, and warning of forced eviction.

Notre-Dame drew €843 million in donations, but France’s 42,000-plus mostly publicly owned churches are decaying as rural populations shrink, with some 3,000 to 5,000 religious buildings thought to be endangered.

A year before its planned December 2024 reopening, Notre Dame’s restoration had raised a rebuilt spire behind 600 tons of scaffolding and medieval-style oak roof beams, with about 50 new staff planned for 15 million visitors a year.

In Belgium’s Flanders region about 350 churches are being repurposed as attendance falls, with former churches in Mechelen and Brussels now serving as a hotel, a brewery, a climbing gym and a nightclub.

France planned a new public subscription, modelled on its heritage lottery, to restore village churches, after €280 million went to 8,265 religious heritage projects over five years and 10,500 religious buildings hold monument status.

A newcomer’s complaint about 600 night-time chimes led a French town to vote on silencing its church bells, a lesson for anyone buying a home near a church in Jamaica or abroad.

More than half of Catholic parishes in the Netherlands have closed, with over 30% of church funds going on building upkeep and Utrecht’s cardinal warning that two-thirds of churches in his area could shut by 2025.

The European Court of Justice ordered Italy to recover unpaid ICI property tax from Church bodies, a sum one politician put at at least four billion euros, after a long fight led by a small Rome Montessori school.

The Church of Sweden, expecting to lose more than 1 million members in a decade, was preparing to sell property as maintenance costs stayed high while membership and attendance fell.