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Austria's Rebel Nuns Refuse To Give Up Instagram To Stay In Their Convent (npr.org) 48

Posted by BeauHD from the nun-rebellion dept.
Three Austrian nuns in their 80s who escaped a care home and reclaimed their old convent are refusing the church's offer to stay because it requires them to quit Instagram, stop speaking to the press, and avoid legal counsel -- conditions they call a gag order. Their standoff with church authorities has now escalated to the Vatican as the nuns continue posting to their 185,000 followers. NPR reports: 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." [...] 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."
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Austria's Rebel Nuns Refuse To Give Up Instagram To Stay In Their Convent More

Austria's Rebel Nuns Refuse To Give Up Instagram To Stay In Their Convent

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  • They're not that young anymore. Give it it 3-5 years and the time will solve the problem for you.

    • Re:Just give it time (Score:4, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @07:17PM (#65829141)

      They're not that young anymore. Give it it 3-5 years and the time will solve the problem for you.

      That sentiment lives here in the U.S. too. :-)

    • Re:Just give it time (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @07:46PM (#65829179) Homepage Journal

      They're apparently active recalcitrant nuns. Odds are at least one lives to 100.

      Life expectancy [lifeexpect...lators.com] for an 85 year old woman is 7-8 years.

      Given 3 of them, I'd bet at least one lasts a decade.

    • Re:Just give it time (Score:5, Funny)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @09:11PM (#65829247)

      The nuns have rejected the proposal, and now Grasl has called on the Vatican to intercede.

      And if that doesn't work, we'll appeal to an even higher authority. The minute God tells us to leave, preferably in writing, we'll go.

      • And if that doesn't work, we'll appeal to an even higher authority.

        It's already in the works.

        The Pope is technically infallible.

        He has a direct wifi connection to the Invisible One In The Sky.

        So when he gets put to the question, it will take a day, two tops, and he'll relay the Big Boy's exact wishes to the old girls.

        Two and a half, if saturday's barbecue party in the Vatican's garden is particularly bangin'

        • Hotline Godline

        • Only in regards to doctrine - God however is an absent slum landlord - otherwise american fundies are fucked

        • I know youâ(TM)re being snarky, but technically speaking, the pope is only considered to be infallible when speaking âoeEx Cathedraâ ie âoefrom the chair.â It has only happened once since 1870, and under current doctrine must be a statement related to a matter of faith or doctrine.

          Realistically, these kinds of issues will rarely be commented on by the pope, and even if they are they would only be a (well respected) opinion.

  • I am really enjoying this story.

    Waiting for the young one to pop an ollie off one of the pews.

    • The grandmas are not "refusing to give up Instagram", they are refusing to be silenced. They're also refusing other attempts to have them "pacified".

      The difference is small, but important.

      • Yes, the demand was to get rid of their legal counsel, not contact the press... and give up Instagram, which was just thrown in there to confuse people and make the nuns look silly when the real intent is to take away their legal rights

      • The grandmas are not "refusing to give up Instagram", they are refusing to be silenced. They're also refusing other attempts to have them "pacified".

        The difference is small, but important.

        It was their bikini clad shots at the beach bar with 10 men that got them in trouble.

        • The grandmas are not "refusing to give up Instagram", they are refusing to be silenced. They're also refusing other attempts to have them "pacified".

          The difference is small, but important.

          It was their bikini clad shots at the beach bar with 10 men that got them in trouble.

          Hey! It's their bodies, their choices

      • I don't think you can call them "grandmas". The difference is small, but important.

    • I am really enjoying this story.

      Waiting for the young one to pop an ollie off one of the pews.

      Honestly, if these nuns wanted to host a fundraiser, I know of at least five bands that would drop everything to go play a show for "The Rebel Nuns." And that's just in the local scene here in bumfuck South Dakota. This is the most "spirit of rock and roll" story I've seen in months.

  • If they have access to social media they might find out that the Pope protected a sex pest before he even became pope. I believe that's actually a requirement, though...

  • must be in accordance with God's will and shaped by human reason.

    Who says that the proposal isn't according to the fictional character's will, which no one can prove or disprove? And it certainly is shaped by human reason.

  • A gag order about what? (Score:5, Informative)

    by piojo ( 995934 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @06:59PM (#65829101)

    The summary makes it sound like much ado about nothing, but from the article:

    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.

    So they're being told they can stay if they don't complain about what the church allegedly did.

    • So they're being told they can stay if they don't complain about what the church allegedly did.

      It's the same thing for Indigenous peoples wherever the Church went.

      • So they're being told they can stay if they don't complain about what the church allegedly did.

        It's the same thing for Indigenous peoples wherever the Church went.

        Or of the poor children everywhere that were put in their care. Or for that matter, of altar boys of any socioeconomic strata
        They may have been pointedly awful to indigenous peoples, but few children of any stripe escaped the priests 'attention'

        • Let's not forget how many nuns were/presumably still are

          A) lesbians kicked out of society
          B) young women with no prospects who found themselves working in a Vatican-owned brothel euphemistically called a convent
          C) both of the above

    • So they're being told they can stay if they don't complain about what the church allegedly did.

      More than that:
      - They cannot talk about what happens to them in the future.
      - They cannot have lay people (outsiders who are not bound by a religious gag-order) come to the convent as they might report on what is done in the future.
      - They cannot seek legal representation, no matter what happens to them in the future.

      It is a deal with the devil.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by piojo ( 995934 )

        Thanks for adding that. And to make it worse, misappropriation of money is usually involved in this type of situation, though perhaps not in this case if they expected to be in a convent for life... It was probably already all given away.

  • News for nerds? Just because of Insta?

  • I'm so sick of clickbait (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday December 01, 2025 @07:34PM (#65829173)
    Headline is they refuse to give up Instagram reality is that they refused to gag order.

    I just got a article in my feed that the lead actress for the Asoka series at Disney refused to do another season because she wasn't paid enough.

    The actual facts are that season 2 filming is already done and one of the other less important characters didn't come back because they didn't offer her enough money to afford to live in London where the shooting was.

    I'm so sick of clickbait. Lately it's being written by shitty AI so it's gotten even worse.

  • Hard to believe you can quit sex, but not Instagram. Guess social media really is addictive. *gag*

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fruviad ( 5032 )

      If they're anything like my aunt, they weren't given the choice to become nuns, but rather were informed in their very early teens that they were now nuns regardless of whether they wanted to be in the religious life, or not. My grandparents subscribed to the idea that the firstborn son would be a priest and the firstborn daughter would be a nun...all part of what "they owed" to the church. My father (the oldest son) saw what happened to his older sister -- she was ripped from the family and they weren't

  • as something of a nun or Priestess myself i think they are based and i hope they retain their social access and the people they need and trust for help in their advanced age; if they want to use social media to reach out to the world- regardless of the content; i think thats a good thing and it will probably keep their minds sharper for longer they by far arent the only nuns using instagram; i follow an account run by Sisters on youtube and they have pretty good content for their audience; im very far from

  • It's a helluva drug.

  • It's tough for them to give up Instagram as they use it out of habit.

  • Who keeps filling Slashdot up with this nunsense??

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