April 12, 2022 • 41 mins
Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once said, “Hearing nuns’ confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.” That’s not true in Belgium. In 1990, nuns in the Diocese of Bruge threw off their habits and embraced the criminal life. So much for vows of poverty.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Elizabeth Dutton, you know what's ridiculous, Yes I do. Saron Burnett,
you know it's ridiculous. Chet Hanks, the progenitor of White
Boys Summer. Yes he is ridiculous. No offense, Tom and Rita.
But also consider a criminal gang of nuns who say,
(00:22):
you know what, forget the church, let's go buy a
castle the south of France and run away forever. I
like it. I know they just go on the run
like big time criminals, and this is their story. If
you have the power of like, you know, God on
your side. Who can stop you? No one, only God
can judge you. M h. I'm Sarry Burnette and welcome
(01:03):
to Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heists and cons. It's always murder free and always ridiculous. Elizabeth,
this episode, I want to talk to you about nuns. Now,
we both went to Catholic school, so we may have
(01:23):
some opinions about this, but this story, I don't think
you're gonna see it coming. Yeah. So imagine you're in Belgium,
right and you're a nun and you're really piste off
with the church. You have a convent, you have all
these holy relics, all these really valuable artwork, and you're like,
you know what, we don't need all this, so you
(01:44):
decide to like liquidate and cut and run. How great
would that be? Amazing? Right? Okay, picture it m you're
in the picture. Askue European town of Bruges. Do you
know Bruge. It's like that from the movie in Bruges,
like with the Colin Farrell. So it's like a Luxembourg
(02:07):
style but it's Belgian, you know, cutesie little European town.
It looks somewhat like it's post medieval, right, Okay. In
the center of Bruges there is a convent. This convent
has burnt around for six hundred years and since it's
now in the center of Bruges, it is hyper valuable.
So the Catholic Church is like, well, you know, we
(02:29):
got all these old nuns sitting there in this convent
in Belgium. Almost all of them are over eighty years old.
They're not getting any new young nuns to come into
the order. We'll probably need to break up this order.
So let's see how do we divvy up what these
nuns have, Well, that's the plan from the bishops, take right.
(02:49):
But the nuns when they hear word of this, they're like, wait,
hold up. We spent all these decades building up all
this value in this convent, maintaining it, creating all these assets,
collecting this artwork, housing these holy relics, and what is
our reward at the end. You're just going to take
all this stuff and give it back to the church
and then just separate us out, scattered to the winds.
(03:12):
We're not into it. So they hear these rumors that
the bishop plans to break up the order. They decide
to work with their handyman and make him their financial director,
and they start quietly selling off all of their property.
(03:32):
For two years. They don't let anybody know what they're doing.
They sell off all of the valuable artwork, they sell
off the holy relics. They start selling off property until
finally the bishop catches wind. Now what do you think
the bishop's response is going to be? Oh, he comes
down hard. Bishops. Bishops don't play around, no, not at all.
(03:53):
So here we are in January. These sisters are called
the Order of the Poor Claires. They sell they're six
year old convent for one point for million dollars. That's
nine nine money, which you be about two point eight
million dollars now, and they sell their real estate to
a local consortium of textile manufacturers. Right, so these big
(04:14):
business people get their hands on the convent. They take
the proceeds this one point four million dollars plus all
the money they've also gathered from selling off the holy
relics and the artwork. So they got more than one
point for a million. They got a few million. So
they go and they buy a castle in the south
of France. They buy a farmhouse in the south of France.
They buy a fleet of Mercedes Sedans, they buy a
(04:35):
Cadillac Seville, they buy eleven race horses, and they break
They decide like this is it. The big day arrives
in January of nineteen ninety and now for me, I'd
like to imagine they wake up that morning, the sun
is shining, they know what they're gonna do. They start
loading up into their fleet of brand new Mercedes. Now,
(04:56):
the one thing about these Mercedes, you have to picture
of them. These are like late eighties Mercedes, that classic right. Uh,
you would see this like I don't know in cons
like just lines of celebrities getting out of these. But
they also have this rental limousine Mercedes that they take
that looks like something the Saudi Royalty would roll in.
(05:17):
So imagine eight nuns leaving their convent like five am
in the morning when they normally get up, they load
up in the Mercedes limo, and then they also have
purchased an ambulance. Why did they need an ambulance in
case they wreck one of the Mercedes. Very responsible nuns, right,
all nuns are responsible. Those late eighties Mercedes is such
(05:42):
a classic body design. Yeah. I had one of those
for a while. How do you like it? I loved it.
We called it the Probable Cosmobile because it was like
like a three eighties Sedana and it was like an
eighty eight or eighty nine, and the windows were blacked
and it passed. When I registered with the California DMV,
they went out, you know, they look at the car
(06:04):
to make sure that the vin is correct. They didn't
say thing about the glass being too dark. I got
pulled over all the time. So these nuns have a
fleet of Probable Cosmobiles, and they also have the Saudi
Royalty limo and then they have pulling up in the
caboose of this like a caravan, is an ambulance that
they purchased for year old sister Agnes. Now, Sister Agnes
(06:27):
doesn't walk, she can't see and she can't hear, but
she's gonna make the run to the south of France.
So they get her her own ambulance so that way
she has all the medical attention she'll need. And they
cut and that's when they make their run for the
South of France. Why do I feel like Sister Agnes
was probably like a real firecracker. Oh, definitely in the day.
(06:47):
She's probably the feistiest of them all. She's refusing to die. Yeah,
you're completely and also not just that, refuses to miss
out on the front. She's like, I maybe next to death,
but I'm still on this side of the grass rolling. Yeah,
She's like, pop the ivy and let's go. Wait. So
they have an ambulance that they have to hire like
a crew of um. I read a bunch of French
(07:10):
newspaper story accounts. There's no mention of a medical staff
attending to her. I think they just wanted to have
the defibrillator at hand, so they probably and she probably
had to be reclined, and they had another nun driving. Yeah,
like whoever's the best driver had to drive well. Also,
it could have been their man, Ronnie Crabbe, who was
(07:31):
originally the groundskeeper, fix it man and driver, so he
very well likely could have been the driver of the
ambulances at the wheel. Yeah, Ronnie steady rolling right, So
that's uh. Were they wearing habits, That's a good question
from our producer, Professor Emeredis Dave Kuston esquire. Were they
(07:53):
wearing habits? They were wearing habits. They're rocking. These are
Belgian nuns who are like basically the equivalent of Orthodox nuns.
So these nuns are they live in medieval lifestyles. They
get up like four in the morning, they go on
the water all the animals. They collect eggs from the
locals that they then trade basically spiritual grace with for
their like sustenance. And they live without any of the
(08:18):
modern necessities you would think of. So they have no
central heating, no central air. They have cold water pumps
for all their their groundwater. These are women who are
basically living in central Bruge next to a place called
the Lake of Love, mind you, and they are. Even
though they are in a basically very modern part of
the city, they themselves live in almost complete medieval standards
(08:41):
where they cloister. Do you think, um, there's no mention.
They are an order of nuns that are dedicated to
a life of absolute poverty. And what I found interesting
about this is, and I didn't know this. Did you
know that priests do not have to take a vow
of poverty? Nuns do? Did you know that priests do
(09:03):
not have to take a vow of chastity but nuns do. Yeah.
Turns out that this is a common misconception. So according
to Franciscan Missionaries dot com, one of right Franciscan Missionaries
dot Com is the hebitating side quote. One of the
(09:23):
most common misconceptions about the Catholic priesthood is that all
priests take a vow of poverty. In fact, most do not.
They make quote promises of obedience to their bishop, chastity,
and to pray the Liturgy of the hours. Now compare
that to nuns. Meanwhile, in convents, this is from the
Washington Post. In convents across the country, elderly women who
(09:46):
have dedicated their lives to serving God, sometimes spend their
last days subsisting on welfare benefits, unable to afford prescription
drugs or even a timely burial. I got one other
quote I'd like to give you about nuns, just to
put this in context. Already quote nuns, this is from
the Washington Post are usually paid about half of what
(10:07):
is made by typical secular workers. So the people who were, like,
you know, the admin at the church, who's like working
at the rectory, they make more than the nuns, about
twice as much. Now, returning to the quote, as religious
orders of nuns look to younger sisters to support the
eldest in their final years, they're finding that the stipends
that they receive do not cover their costs. And with
(10:29):
a dramatic decline in vocations for nuns in the Catholic
Church since nineteen sixty five, basically since Vatican too, there
is even less money coming in to meet the needs
of the aged nuns. So we have a huge bias
in the Catholic Church where they are the priests do
not have to have these vows of poverty, the vows
of obedience to their bishop or whatever, and the nuns do.
(10:52):
So sounds about accurate, right, I've seen it. Yeah, so
let's put a pin in that and will come right
back with more from these rogue nuns who I am
rooting for me and we're back now. Did you know
(11:27):
in the idea of nuns going rogue and criminal was
kind of in the air. Yeah, there was. Actually three
months after these Belgian nuns went on the run, there
was a movie called Nuns on the Run starring former
Monty Python Eric Idol and a British actor, Robbie Coltrane.
Were they portray nuns who go undercover in a convent
(11:48):
after stealing a bunch of money from their old criminal
gang and then trying to make it to Brazil. So
this was kind of like a zeitgeist thing. You remember that, right,
Remember that movie. It was not a great movie. It
was fun. What that's my favorite movie? I take it all,
but still is. I have eight copies on DVD, so
it's your citizen game. Yeah, it's my Yeah, so I
(12:13):
don't I've never seen it? Yeah, well you know it's
it's um. You could go the rest of your days
without having seen it and not really miss anything. But
at the same time, it's better than dental surgery. So
there is that, But focus on how this came to
be of these nuns going on the run. Now for
the movie, obviously with a screenwriter, but for these actual
(12:34):
nuns on the run, their inspiration was the aforementioned Ronnie Crabb,
now Ronnie Crab, who's got just a great name for
the type of person he is is basically this I
don't even quite know what to call him, because he's
not just a con man. He comes to the church
as recommended by the bishop. He's a protege of a
(12:55):
friend of the bishop. So the bishop says, hey, I
got a job for this kid. Kid goes and is
working at the convent. He's their lawnmower guy. He's their
fixed handyman guy. He's their driver, he's their extra hands.
But he also, for whatever reason, seems to be charming. Now,
although he is a thirty year old Belgian man and
most of these nuns are in their eighties, they somehow
(13:18):
get along and over time he convinces them that they're
being done dirty by the church, and he's like, because
they probably were, Oh he's not wrong. Does does he
wear short cut off jeans when he does the lawn.
Can't you just see him out there like Joe dirt
but a heavy sweater. I could totally see that. He's
(13:43):
a like, I don't know, like I kind of picture
him like the star of a bad summer teen comedy
where he's the villain kid. You know, this is like
him before he's in the movie. This is like what
he was doing before he became a bad executive. His
origin story exactly. So Ronnie Crabb is hanging out with
the nuns and he starts like trying to teach them
(14:05):
about modern life. This is according to Ronnie Crabb. He starts,
you know, explaining to them that there are these tastes
of pleasure that they have not known. And they start
to listen to him, and apparently the mother superior, Sister Anna,
she decides, you know what, screw the church. The bishop
is trying to break us up. After all we've done,
Ronnie Crabs, right, we are gonna sell off all this stuff.
(14:27):
And Ronnie Crabb is gonna help us get out of town.
And he's like, yeah, we're gonna sell the convent. I
got this castle down to the south of France, and
he had a castle in the south of France, or
he had a line on he had a line on
a castle in the south of France. Because remember he
hooks them up with the consortium of textile businesses that
want to buy the convent. I wanted to this business
(14:50):
community outside the convent. Yeah, I wanted to ask you
about the textile consortium. Did they want to turn the
convent into like a factory? What were they going to
do with it? They had a cu all ideas. They
wanted to turn it into something for a factory, like
a centralized factory. They also thought about basically, it is
nine so there was a housing boom at the time.
(15:11):
They're thinking about turning it into you know, uh, updated
housing where you take some old structure and then you
add some modern efficiencies and amenities and all of a
sudden you make it into like a cool place to live.
That was their plan, except for Belgian law indicated that
that had to be a convent. It couldn't be anything else.
So what did they do. They decided to try to
(15:33):
make a plan to sell the convent as individual convents
that somebody could live in. So they used the word
convent and expanded its meaning and said, oh yes, you
can come here and stay at this nonprofit association and
own a part of the convents. They basically tried to
turn the convent into condos, but still call it a convent.
The Belgian did not go for that. That's like the
(15:55):
worst investment idea I've heard. Yeah, it's good. They well,
the typical businessmen, you know, they're just like, oh, yeah,
this value, I can see. I can sell this to
twenty thirty five year olds for huge profits. And they're like,
nobody wants to live in a convent, dude, even if
it's next to the Lake of Love. They're like, no, no,
they would this will be great. No hot water, no, no, no,
(16:18):
none of the modern amenities. But they would have added
that we But so Ronnie crab is basically he's got
all of these nuns all lined up and fired up
to go run to this way to the south of France.
They sell off all the property, all the holy relics,
all the art in the convent, and they make their
move in January. They actually escape, They get away and
(16:40):
they go down and they're living in the castle. And
he was cool about it. He had a pool installed
in the castle. They had all these luxury food in
the refrigerator. He had them live in large. He was
selling them on the idea of you need to know
these modern luxuries you've never known, and so they go
for it. I mean they had eleven horses. Now they
some debate if the horses were for food or for pleasure.
(17:02):
But regardless, well not that kind of pleasure. There's still nuns.
I think they just wanted to ride them. I don't
know if they wanted to ride them. Now, Ronnie crap
has one problem. Can you guess what it is? Crabs?
I don't know. Ronnie Crabb has one problem. He's got
(17:23):
the nuns down to the south of France, so what
could possibly be his problem? Everything's worth no but good guests,
very good guess. Turns out there is one nun. He's like,
I don't trust this dude. He's candious. Her name is
Sister Clara. The Sister Clara is a novice nun. She's
new to the order. She's still got the ardor of
(17:44):
coming into the church. While all the older nuns have
been in the church and they're losing something. She has
something to gain a lifetime in the church. So she
goes to the Belgian authorities. After she goes to the
bishop and says, this Ronnie Crab has been psychologically abusing
the women. He's been physically abusing the women. He's extorted them,
he has embezzled them, he has swindled them. And the
(18:04):
bishops like, this works for me, Let's take this to
the police. So he then has Sister Clara right out
in Affid David. She gives it to the Belgian authorities
a budget. Authorities are like wait what they did? What?
And now you know the bishop He's like, yes, you
have to do something about this because I told them
they cannot sell the convent because it belongs to the
(18:27):
Church of Rome. But the Church of Rome doesn't have
police like that, so they can't stop them. So we
have to have the Swiss Guard. Well that's to protect
the pope. They don't have somebody going around like you know,
like c s I team that they handled out property
issues for the bishop. Yeah, and like their little fancy
lad outfits, and they just send them out to dispatch
them to the holy water kits and fingerprint kits, holy
(18:50):
water and a scort gun. That is amazing. It's action action.
So the bishop goes to the police because he needs
secular power. In this instance, there's nothing he can do
because the nuns weren't listening to him. So he goes
to the cops, and the cops say, okay, they started
an investigation. They sequester all of the funds that the
(19:12):
nuns have put in the bank. They still have access
to the bank, so they lock out the sisters from
their money. Then they go heading down to find where
they are down in the South of France. Now, if
I say the South of France, what do you picture
lavender fields? Lavender fields? Right, so you feel you figure
like Provence, or maybe do you picture the French Riviera
(19:34):
ever or the wine country? Yeah, yeah, I would say,
Or maybe they went to a yeah, exactly, all beautiful locations, right,
they did not go there. This is not the South
of France they went to he shouldn't even really be
called the South of France. It's more like they went
to southern France. They ended up in the Pyrenees, in
the middle of nowhere, working class industrial town, in a
(19:57):
castle outside of this working class industrial town called Tarbs,
and it is basically right above the border of Spain
in the Pyrenees mountains, like Basque country kind of Yeah,
but not even the cool part. It's it's just a
town that has been where they military used to make bullets.
That's their big industry, bullet makers. So the nuns are
living yeah yeah, Well there's castles all over Europe and
(20:19):
that's just they just litter that place. But the nuns
are in a town known for making bullets. That's where
Ronnie Crabs set them up to live out their golden
years and enjoy the luxuries of modern life. So Ronnie Crabb,
they start to realize may not have had their best
interests at heart. I believe Sister Clara. Yep, Sister Clara
is like, see, I told y'all not to do this.
(20:40):
Now we have to go back to these bishop. The
bishop is more than problematic, you know, like I'd say,
most bishops you can make the arguments are problematic, right,
but this bishop, he has had an issue with the
Mother Superior, Sister Anna. Sister Anna and the Bishop have
(21:01):
been going back and forth for years about whether or
not she's going to listen to what the bishop has
to say. The Bishop is always like, you guys at
the at the convent need to do X, Y and Z,
and she's like, we'll do X, I mean no, you
need to do X, Y and Z. He's like, no, no, no,
we're we have been doing this longer. So they have
basically a power struggle. So he starts putting into play
(21:23):
his plan to seize their convent. She recognizes that she
starts selling out. The nuns all make their plan and
they get away. Now that was the story that Ronnie
Crabs lawyers tell. Apparently, Sister Anna and the Bishop had
a heated moment just before they left town. The Bishop
(21:45):
shows up on a Tuesday night under the cover of darkness.
He shows up at the convent. He has not been
allowed into the convent. The convent. He's demanded their books
because he knows he's heard that they're selling off stuff.
He wants to see it and that they have to
submit their financial accounting to him. They won't do it,
so he shows up with the convent and demands to
see them. Sister Anna is like, all right, come on in,
(22:08):
So they go and they have their little talk. Now
this is like about eleven PM, and according to Mother
Superior Sister Anna, the Bishop tries one last time to
convince her to side with him on this and have
the sale of the convent canceled and she's like, no, son,
I ain't doing that. And he's like, wall, wait a minute,
wait a minute. I order you, by the power of
(22:31):
Rome to do this. Isn't me asking. The Pope wants
this done. If you don't do this, you'll be dismissed
from the church. And she's like, uh no, he should
have tried it. By the power of grace Skull or
the power of grace land, I mean, there's the other
more powerful. And like when a bishop or like a
month senior rolls up to your house and makes those
(22:53):
kind of demands, like say, if you had skipped out
on confirmation class a bunch of times and the on
senior comes to your house, it's like a personal story,
but go on, you know, it's just you know, hypothetically,
if if you kept skipping and he comes to your
house and says, by the power of the Church of Rome,
it's it's intimidating. Oh that's what he's counting on. But
(23:16):
times have changed, so Sister Anna is like, I'm not
into it. She recognizes what the bishop is trying to do.
If he removes her as the head of the convent,
she loses the authority to prove the sale. He gets
power back over the sale. She recognizes this is not
about the nuns of the convent. He's just trying to
run a power game on her. So she's like no.
In fact, not only do I say no, but we're
(23:38):
gonna leave in the days to come. So the bishop,
she tells him, they don't just run away. She tells
them we're fleeing. And then a couple of days later
they make their cut. So now the bishop, using this
other sister Sister Clara and her like affidavit against Ronnie Crabb,
has had the cops go down and retrieve the nuns. Meanwhile,
the nuns have discovered down in the south of France
(23:58):
or southern France, that they are living in a place
once again has no central air, no central heat, but
also has huge holes in the roof and is a
stone building. And it's winter time. So they're sitting there
in a old ass castle in January, freezing their old
asses off. Sister Agnes and poor sister a little sister Agnes.
(24:19):
You can't see, can't here, can't walk, but she's cold,
darn cold. In fact, she's not long for this world.
But she does get to enjoy her final moments with
her sisters free from the bishop. That is the good
news about Sister Agnes. Now, as soon as the sisters
leave and they have been alone, the Bishop has been
(24:40):
working with the powers that be and he's the one
who gets the police to go down there and grab them.
Now the question is is where is Ronnie Crabb? Oh?
I think Ronnie Crabs in the wind. Now, let's put
a pin in that. I'll get back to you with
that after this ad break. So back to our story,
(25:17):
Ronnie Crab, where's our man, Ronnie Crab. Ronnie Crab is
at the premiere of Nuns on the Run in Circus
close but no cigar. Nope. He actually was down in
the south of France with the nuns and he is
arrested by a Belgian authorities on February and brought back
(25:39):
to Belgium. He is arrested on charges of swindling, abuse
of trust, elder abuse, and they seize the farmhouse, the castle,
the fleet of cars. They seize everything and Ronnie Crab.
So now the sisters are living there still underseas property,
so they no longer get to own it. Ronnie c
(26:00):
Ab is taken away from them, and the bishop thinks,
I've gotten everything I want back, right. Well, it turns
out no, because when Ronnie Crabb goes to court, he
gets a lawyer who starts getting the nuns to turn
on the bishop so that the lawyer, his lawyer has
this one sister Josephine, and she's like, we did this
all according to our right minds. This we wanted this
(26:21):
to do this. Ronnie Crab had nothing to do with this.
The nuns start defending Ronnie Krab, but it turns out
that was not the best move because although they defended
Ronnie Crab, Ronnie Crab had actually been embezzling from them.
There's ten million dollars missing out of all the money
that they were able to gather up from their artwork,
hold on ten millionllion dollars and that's missing. So is
(26:46):
that there's still some because the lawyer says, all the
money that they they're trying to gather should be easily found.
It's all in bank accounts or the houses or the cars.
You just sell that stuff and you'll get your money back.
What they do ten million dollars short ten million, So
this is all like from the stuff that they sold
inside the convent because of what the convent was like
(27:06):
one point something at one point formula. And then interestingly,
the bishop and Ronnie Crabb have a back room deal
going on because the bishop knows Ronnie Crabb knows the
commercial interest that he sold the convent to. The bishop
just wants the property back. He doesn't really care about
anything else, so he goes to Ronnie Crab, you can
get me that property back. We can make this good.
And the readisn't we know this is Ronnie Crabb's lawyer
(27:29):
keeps telling things that nobody should know except for the bishop.
When he gives his press conferences, He's like, well, the
Ronnie Crabb says, the nuns will do this. Ronnie Crabb says,
the nuns will do that. Everything he says turns out
to be true and all contingent upon the bishop. So
it turns out that it looks like Ronnie Crab and
the Bishop basically make a backroom deal. Thirty nine days
after him being arrested, charges are dropped, Ronnie Crabb is
(27:52):
allowed to go free. What does he do? He writes
a book about it, where he casts himself as the
libertine bon vivant who teaches these medieval nuns how to
once again live. He calls the book now forgive my
Belgian on this deshat von de r McLaren, which means
the Treasures of the Poor Claire's. Yeah, and in this book,
(28:18):
he says. The book is quote about how the nuns,
who until then had lived in cloisters, decided to set sail.
A young man served as their guide. Yeah, I'll just
let that statement sit there on its own. So they
were living in cloisters, so they couldn't even talk to
each other. No, because I don't think he's right about blisters,
(28:39):
like in terms of the like the cells in which
they slept exactly. I don't think they were silent nuns.
They didn't have that, because you'll understand later why that is.
So this book then gets turned into a TV movie.
It's called ing Passe once Again forgive my Belgian, and
(29:00):
was made for Belgian and French television. I tried to
find this movie because I wanted to see how he
portrayed himself and what the medieval nuns look like. All
I could find were absolutely terrible reviews. Apparently people still
those who remember this movie hated it. So who played
who played Ronnie Crab in the TV movie Oh, a
(29:20):
French actor that neither of us knows. That would be hilarious.
What a remake that would be. Jean Claude van Dam
with a bunch of nuns and he teaches them how
to live and how to kick. They're just a mesmerized
by the power of his thighs. Well, they've never seen
anything like that. So one year after that TV movie
(29:43):
comes out the nuns who meanwhile have been basically fighting
with the church to stay together and to keep their order.
They've been sequestered into two not luxury apartments, but nice
apartments in Bruges on the coast right, so they're basically
put up together. There's eight of them. They're staying in
apartments where there's like kind of for and for, so
they're not doing great. Sister Agnes passes away. Um they're
(30:06):
allowed to stay together, which was a big important thing
for Sister Anna, the mother superior. She's been fighting for
that after they lost her property. She did not want
them to be scattered to the wind by the bishop,
so she fights for that and that's about the only
thing they managed to pull off. So is the diocese
footing the bill for this or that is a larger order,
or their sisters of the Poor Claire and other locations.
(30:27):
There are other Sisters of the Poort Claire, but they
are a very small order relative to the other nuns.
And what they have is the churches primarily paying for
their old age care. But the church doesn't really want
to because these nuns, you know, did what they considered
to be an a legal move, and they still want
to punish them. So they basically make the Belgian state
(30:48):
pay for them as old infirmed people, which the Belican
state does for all of its old infirmed people. So
they're basically living on welfare, so the church does not
really look out for them. Now at that same on
that same time, after they see the TV movie come
out and then they know that there's there's this missing
ten million dollars, they decide to sue Ronnie Crab and
they bring him back into court and he's found to
(31:11):
be basically a bad dude, but it's not guilty of embezzlement.
They cannot nail him on this. He gets away again.
Now what does he do? What's the next time we
see Ronnie Crab pop up into headlines. Ronnie Crab. Okay,
so you've got a con man, swindler, Belgium con mander, guru,
(31:34):
good close guests, politics, well kind of same stuff, you know.
So he gets involved in what's called n v A.
N v A is a Flemish conservative political party. They
are kind of the Belgium first like far right party. Now,
this is part of a Flemish movement in the which
(31:56):
is like a nationalist movement. Now, what do we know
about these nationalists movement? They usually rely on religious conservatives
and having a party leader who has basically ripped off
a bunch of aged nuns not a good look for business.
So the ultra conservatives are like, look, Ronnie Crab, you
gotta get out of here. Man. He's like, what, just
because I did a little jail time ripping off some
nuns I was a young man. What They're like, no, no, no,
(32:20):
And so he goes and disappears. And that's the last
we hear of Ronnie Crab Right now. The best part
of this story for me, at least as a you know,
a former Catholic, you know, because we both went to
Catholic school. Right now, you had mostly nuns, right, I
did the high school that I went to as an
(32:40):
all girls high school and it was attached to a convent,
and it was half of those giant, old, gorgeous building
and half was the high school and half was the convent.
And if you like I did, tore your knee up
in sports and had to wear a mobilizer. We got
to use the elevator in the convent and it was
(33:01):
one of the old ones with the gate. It allowed
me to walk through the convent every day to get
because there was a three story building in order to
get to class. And you got to see how the
nuns lived there, Yeah, and it was it was. They
took the poverty thing seriously. They had really bare cots
in their rooms and um they had a parlor with
(33:22):
a radio and they were all like super Oakland as fans. Yeah, yeah,
it was all all we all were are. And they
would listen to the games on the radio. And parents
were always saying we could buy you a TV and
they said, no, we don't want it. And then their
kitchens were always bear and parents would buy groceries and
they would take the bare minimum stuff out and donate
(33:43):
the rest to the They're the real heart of the
Catholic Church. Yeah, and and the you know thing is
it's like they embody so much of what you want
just in human beings. I mean, yeah, there are some
like hard as nuns of course, No, they're the ones
who grow chalk, hit you with the ruler. I mean yeah,
there's definitely the old school like fire and Brimstone, Fatigan
(34:04):
one nuner. Sure. But then I think my favorite of
the zany nuns. I had a lot of zany nun
teachers who you know, Sister Mary Elizabeth, my orchestra instructors,
just crazy lady, she was so fun. Or Sister Paul Gerard,
she had pica pika. She ate chalk in biology class
(34:24):
and no one really wanted to make her feel bad
about it, but we all like to watch her drag
her fingers through the chalk tray and then stuck on.
It was like the only food she was getting. Yeah,
they were just you know, they're really they're they're they're
good people. Now. See, I went to all boys Catholic school,
so we had the rectory was priests. They lived on
on campus, and uh, it was not how you described
(34:46):
the nuns living at Jesuit. It was the exact same thing.
You go out or where did the priests live? And
it was like not a what a chateau basically's like
one of the Spanish homes where you have a courtyard
in the middle, and they were releas fruit trees. It
was just like really nice. And they, like my favorite
priest had a red sports car. I mean, these were
like guys who had figured out a good scam. I
(35:08):
was like, damn, well we have. The other thing is
you can't paint everyone. This applies to everything. You can't
paint people with the broadbrush. True. Alright, so both of us,
having come from these Catholic schools, you've got to be
rooting for these nuns, right, I mean absolutely reading for
these nuns. And then they get screwed by this con man,
Ronnie Crab. He goes off and joins Belgian far right
(35:29):
politics and he has his own little thing. The bishop.
We won't even get into him, but just assume he
is what you would assume of a bishop of that time.
And finally, though, I would like to give you at
least one good point of how this story goes and
has a nice sweet ending for two nuns. Are you ready? Okay?
(35:53):
So remember Mother super Sister Anna and you remember the
snitch Sister Clara. I think snitch is a strong word.
She was. I I appreciate what she did, but she snitched.
I ain't gonna like, you know, double talking. So she
went to the Bishop of Bruge. But the reason why
she snitched, and this is where your instincts are solid,
(36:15):
it was out of love. She was looking to protect
the other sisters. She saw them losing sight of their mission,
and specifically one nun in particular. Can you guess who
no not to night? Sister Anna, the Mother Superior and
the novice had a thing. So it turns out that
(36:39):
the Bishop of Bruge asked the nuns to return to
the fold. They would then be barred from returning to
their convent, of course, and he would split them up
and send them to different convents. And then Sister On
was like, uh, there is no question down in you know.
This is a quote from Sister On and she says,
there's no question in Paisson, which is the little town
outside of Rbs where their castle was, we found perfect happiness.
(37:03):
We don't care at all about the lack of comfort
in our new home. We feel closer to the Lord
there than to Bruges. So they actually got to have
their spiritual awakening and complete like harmony with the Lord.
So they got that. But then on top of that,
the heart also got what the heart wanted. The nuns
who were returned, you know, to the pair of apartments.
(37:25):
They're fine. Sister Agnes passes away, but Sister Anna, the
Mother Superior, she rekindled her friendship with a woman named
gilloman lamb Brex. And the reason why you haven't heard
that name is Gillomene lamb Brex is the name of
Sister Clara after she left the Order of the Poor Claire's.
She leaves the nunnery, she goes out and she buys
(37:47):
a house. She gets this house, a little farmhouse out
on the edge. It's right next to this small stream,
a picturesque place, and it's in the heart of the
our dance forest. And and so she is there. And
who goes to join her, Sister Anna. I love that
Mother Superior and the novice end up together in a
small little farmhouse next to a stream in the r
(38:09):
Dan's and they get to enjoy that life together. That's
so lovely. I'm so happy for them. So what is
our ridiculous takeaway from this story. I think the ridiculous
takeaway would be it's ridiculous to mess with some nuns.
You can only push a woman so far, and you
can only push your nun half as far as that exactly. Now, Personally,
(38:33):
I think the Catholic Church needs to recognize that the
nuns are the best thing they got going. And it's
ridiculous that they keep thinking that anybody wants to give
a f about the priests, because I'm telling you what,
the nuns and the only way you're going to save
that church. Well, they're living the truth of it. They're
they're actually living it out of being really dedicated to
(38:54):
social justice and they're a real deal. They're living according
to the you know, the beliefs of the church well,
and the core of like I think every religious belief
is just to love right, and like, you know, aside
from the nuns who are mean and throw things at
you in class if you're muttering in the back of
the room, I don't know, hypothetically, you know, the truth is,
it's just love, right, and they just they want to serve,
(39:17):
they want to serve others out of love. And so
you see, like Clara doing that exactly. So she went
with her beliefs and then it turned out it worked
really nice. Now, just to put a fine point on
all of this, a couple of years back, I was
at the u N Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and
I gotta see Glorious Steinhem talk, right, and she said
(39:41):
something that is stuck with me ever since then. She
basically compared. She said, do you know the big trick
that the priest did? Right? Not me and everybody listening,
We're like, no, what's the big trees trick the priest did?
She's like, they stole motherhood from women. You're like, what,
how does that work? And she says, think about it.
You are can do a church. There is the outer
(40:01):
vestible inter vestible, and then there is the long central
channel leading up to an altar. Right, that's the form
of a church. What does that sound like? A vagina
outer labia, inner labia, a central canal leading to an
altar where the consecration of life occurs. Right, but in
this place we have men in skirts promising to give
(40:22):
life afterlife, which is more important than the life that
you were given by your actual mother. I was like, whoa,
that's crazy, glorious steinhum, but it's stuck with me and
I'm not necessarily saying she's right. But if you think
about that, that has been like the priest's whole thing
forever has been tastically trying to take the power of
women and make it their own power and being like oh,
(40:42):
and then these nuns are like, uh, yeah, I love
them for it. Okay, now that is ridiculous. You win,
That is ridiculous. Well, thanks for joining us, and I
am Elizabeth Dunton. You can find us online at Ridiculous
Crime on Twitter and Instagram. Or if you've got a
(41:03):
tip for us about a ridiculous crime that you'd like
to hear about, or maybe one that you've committed, we
want to hear about it, so you can write to
us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and we'd
love to hear from you. Until next time, Catch you later.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett's
(41:25):
produced and edited by Dave Kirsten. The theme song is
by Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. The executive producers are
Ben Ballin and Noel Brown. Ridiculous Crime is a production
of I Heart Radio four more podcasts to my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
(41:47):
listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Elizabeth Dutton, you know what's ridiculous, Yes I do. Saron Burnett,
you know it's ridiculous. Chet Hanks, the progenitor of White
Boys Summer. Yes he is ridiculous. No offense, Tom and Rita.
But also consider a criminal gang of nuns who say,
(00:22):
you know what, forget the church, let's go buy a
castle the south of France and run away forever. I
like it. I know they just go on the run
like big time criminals, and this is their story. If
you have the power of like, you know, God on
your side. Who can stop you? No one, only God
can judge you. M h. I'm Sarry Burnette and welcome
(01:03):
to Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
heists and cons. It's always murder free and always ridiculous. Elizabeth,
this episode, I want to talk to you about nuns. Now,
we both went to Catholic school, so we may have
(01:23):
some opinions about this, but this story, I don't think
you're gonna see it coming. Yeah. So imagine you're in Belgium,
right and you're a nun and you're really piste off
with the church. You have a convent, you have all
these holy relics, all these really valuable artwork, and you're like,
you know what, we don't need all this, so you
(01:44):
decide to like liquidate and cut and run. How great
would that be? Amazing? Right? Okay, picture it m you're
in the picture. Askue European town of Bruges. Do you
know Bruge. It's like that from the movie in Bruges,
like with the Colin Farrell. So it's like a Luxembourg
(02:07):
style but it's Belgian, you know, cutesie little European town.
It looks somewhat like it's post medieval, right, Okay. In
the center of Bruges there is a convent. This convent
has burnt around for six hundred years and since it's
now in the center of Bruges, it is hyper valuable.
So the Catholic Church is like, well, you know, we
(02:29):
got all these old nuns sitting there in this convent
in Belgium. Almost all of them are over eighty years old.
They're not getting any new young nuns to come into
the order. We'll probably need to break up this order.
So let's see how do we divvy up what these
nuns have, Well, that's the plan from the bishops, take right.
(02:49):
But the nuns when they hear word of this, they're like, wait,
hold up. We spent all these decades building up all
this value in this convent, maintaining it, creating all these assets,
collecting this artwork, housing these holy relics, and what is
our reward at the end. You're just going to take
all this stuff and give it back to the church
and then just separate us out, scattered to the winds.
(03:12):
We're not into it. So they hear these rumors that
the bishop plans to break up the order. They decide
to work with their handyman and make him their financial director,
and they start quietly selling off all of their property.
(03:32):
For two years. They don't let anybody know what they're doing.
They sell off all of the valuable artwork, they sell
off the holy relics. They start selling off property until
finally the bishop catches wind. Now what do you think
the bishop's response is going to be? Oh, he comes
down hard. Bishops. Bishops don't play around, no, not at all.
(03:53):
So here we are in January. These sisters are called
the Order of the Poor Claires. They sell they're six
year old convent for one point for million dollars. That's
nine nine money, which you be about two point eight
million dollars now, and they sell their real estate to
a local consortium of textile manufacturers. Right, so these big
(04:14):
business people get their hands on the convent. They take
the proceeds this one point four million dollars plus all
the money they've also gathered from selling off the holy
relics and the artwork. So they got more than one
point for a million. They got a few million. So
they go and they buy a castle in the south
of France. They buy a farmhouse in the south of France.
They buy a fleet of Mercedes Sedans, they buy a
(04:35):
Cadillac Seville, they buy eleven race horses, and they break
They decide like this is it. The big day arrives
in January of nineteen ninety and now for me, I'd
like to imagine they wake up that morning, the sun
is shining, they know what they're gonna do. They start
loading up into their fleet of brand new Mercedes. Now,
(04:56):
the one thing about these Mercedes, you have to picture
of them. These are like late eighties Mercedes, that classic right. Uh,
you would see this like I don't know in cons
like just lines of celebrities getting out of these. But
they also have this rental limousine Mercedes that they take
that looks like something the Saudi Royalty would roll in.
(05:17):
So imagine eight nuns leaving their convent like five am
in the morning when they normally get up, they load
up in the Mercedes limo, and then they also have
purchased an ambulance. Why did they need an ambulance in
case they wreck one of the Mercedes. Very responsible nuns, right,
all nuns are responsible. Those late eighties Mercedes is such
(05:42):
a classic body design. Yeah. I had one of those
for a while. How do you like it? I loved it.
We called it the Probable Cosmobile because it was like
like a three eighties Sedana and it was like an
eighty eight or eighty nine, and the windows were blacked
and it passed. When I registered with the California DMV,
they went out, you know, they look at the car
(06:04):
to make sure that the vin is correct. They didn't
say thing about the glass being too dark. I got
pulled over all the time. So these nuns have a
fleet of Probable Cosmobiles, and they also have the Saudi
Royalty limo and then they have pulling up in the
caboose of this like a caravan, is an ambulance that
they purchased for year old sister Agnes. Now, Sister Agnes
(06:27):
doesn't walk, she can't see and she can't hear, but
she's gonna make the run to the south of France.
So they get her her own ambulance so that way
she has all the medical attention she'll need. And they
cut and that's when they make their run for the
South of France. Why do I feel like Sister Agnes
was probably like a real firecracker. Oh, definitely in the day.
(06:47):
She's probably the feistiest of them all. She's refusing to die. Yeah,
you're completely and also not just that, refuses to miss
out on the front. She's like, I maybe next to death,
but I'm still on this side of the grass rolling. Yeah,
She's like, pop the ivy and let's go. Wait. So
they have an ambulance that they have to hire like
a crew of um. I read a bunch of French
(07:10):
newspaper story accounts. There's no mention of a medical staff
attending to her. I think they just wanted to have
the defibrillator at hand, so they probably and she probably
had to be reclined, and they had another nun driving. Yeah,
like whoever's the best driver had to drive well. Also,
it could have been their man, Ronnie Crabbe, who was
(07:31):
originally the groundskeeper, fix it man and driver, so he
very well likely could have been the driver of the
ambulances at the wheel. Yeah, Ronnie steady rolling right, So
that's uh. Were they wearing habits, That's a good question
from our producer, Professor Emeredis Dave Kuston esquire. Were they
(07:53):
wearing habits? They were wearing habits. They're rocking. These are
Belgian nuns who are like basically the equivalent of Orthodox nuns.
So these nuns are they live in medieval lifestyles. They
get up like four in the morning, they go on
the water all the animals. They collect eggs from the
locals that they then trade basically spiritual grace with for
their like sustenance. And they live without any of the
(08:18):
modern necessities you would think of. So they have no
central heating, no central air. They have cold water pumps
for all their their groundwater. These are women who are
basically living in central Bruge next to a place called
the Lake of Love, mind you, and they are. Even
though they are in a basically very modern part of
the city, they themselves live in almost complete medieval standards
(08:41):
where they cloister. Do you think, um, there's no mention.
They are an order of nuns that are dedicated to
a life of absolute poverty. And what I found interesting
about this is, and I didn't know this. Did you
know that priests do not have to take a vow
of poverty? Nuns do? Did you know that priests do
(09:03):
not have to take a vow of chastity but nuns do. Yeah.
Turns out that this is a common misconception. So according
to Franciscan Missionaries dot com, one of right Franciscan Missionaries
dot Com is the hebitating side quote. One of the
(09:23):
most common misconceptions about the Catholic priesthood is that all
priests take a vow of poverty. In fact, most do not.
They make quote promises of obedience to their bishop, chastity,
and to pray the Liturgy of the hours. Now compare
that to nuns. Meanwhile, in convents, this is from the
Washington Post. In convents across the country, elderly women who
(09:46):
have dedicated their lives to serving God, sometimes spend their
last days subsisting on welfare benefits, unable to afford prescription
drugs or even a timely burial. I got one other
quote I'd like to give you about nuns, just to
put this in context. Already quote nuns, this is from
the Washington Post are usually paid about half of what
(10:07):
is made by typical secular workers. So the people who were, like,
you know, the admin at the church, who's like working
at the rectory, they make more than the nuns, about
twice as much. Now, returning to the quote, as religious
orders of nuns look to younger sisters to support the
eldest in their final years, they're finding that the stipends
that they receive do not cover their costs. And with
(10:29):
a dramatic decline in vocations for nuns in the Catholic
Church since nineteen sixty five, basically since Vatican too, there
is even less money coming in to meet the needs
of the aged nuns. So we have a huge bias
in the Catholic Church where they are the priests do
not have to have these vows of poverty, the vows
of obedience to their bishop or whatever, and the nuns do.
(10:52):
So sounds about accurate, right, I've seen it. Yeah, so
let's put a pin in that and will come right
back with more from these rogue nuns who I am
rooting for me and we're back now. Did you know
(11:27):
in the idea of nuns going rogue and criminal was
kind of in the air. Yeah, there was. Actually three
months after these Belgian nuns went on the run, there
was a movie called Nuns on the Run starring former
Monty Python Eric Idol and a British actor, Robbie Coltrane.
Were they portray nuns who go undercover in a convent
(11:48):
after stealing a bunch of money from their old criminal
gang and then trying to make it to Brazil. So
this was kind of like a zeitgeist thing. You remember that, right,
Remember that movie. It was not a great movie. It
was fun. What that's my favorite movie? I take it all,
but still is. I have eight copies on DVD, so
it's your citizen game. Yeah, it's my Yeah, so I
(12:13):
don't I've never seen it? Yeah, well you know it's
it's um. You could go the rest of your days
without having seen it and not really miss anything. But
at the same time, it's better than dental surgery. So
there is that, But focus on how this came to
be of these nuns going on the run. Now for
the movie, obviously with a screenwriter, but for these actual
(12:34):
nuns on the run, their inspiration was the aforementioned Ronnie Crabb,
now Ronnie Crab, who's got just a great name for
the type of person he is is basically this I
don't even quite know what to call him, because he's
not just a con man. He comes to the church
as recommended by the bishop. He's a protege of a
(12:55):
friend of the bishop. So the bishop says, hey, I
got a job for this kid. Kid goes and is
working at the convent. He's their lawnmower guy. He's their
fixed handyman guy. He's their driver, he's their extra hands.
But he also, for whatever reason, seems to be charming. Now,
although he is a thirty year old Belgian man and
most of these nuns are in their eighties, they somehow
(13:18):
get along and over time he convinces them that they're
being done dirty by the church, and he's like, because
they probably were, Oh he's not wrong. Does does he
wear short cut off jeans when he does the lawn.
Can't you just see him out there like Joe dirt
but a heavy sweater. I could totally see that. He's
(13:43):
a like, I don't know, like I kind of picture
him like the star of a bad summer teen comedy
where he's the villain kid. You know, this is like
him before he's in the movie. This is like what
he was doing before he became a bad executive. His
origin story exactly. So Ronnie Crabb is hanging out with
the nuns and he starts like trying to teach them
(14:05):
about modern life. This is according to Ronnie Crabb. He starts,
you know, explaining to them that there are these tastes
of pleasure that they have not known. And they start
to listen to him, and apparently the mother superior, Sister Anna,
she decides, you know what, screw the church. The bishop
is trying to break us up. After all we've done,
Ronnie Crabs, right, we are gonna sell off all this stuff.
(14:27):
And Ronnie Crabb is gonna help us get out of town.
And he's like, yeah, we're gonna sell the convent. I
got this castle down to the south of France, and
he had a castle in the south of France, or
he had a line on he had a line on
a castle in the south of France. Because remember he
hooks them up with the consortium of textile businesses that
want to buy the convent. I wanted to this business
(14:50):
community outside the convent. Yeah, I wanted to ask you
about the textile consortium. Did they want to turn the
convent into like a factory? What were they going to
do with it? They had a cu all ideas. They
wanted to turn it into something for a factory, like
a centralized factory. They also thought about basically, it is
nine so there was a housing boom at the time.
(15:11):
They're thinking about turning it into you know, uh, updated
housing where you take some old structure and then you
add some modern efficiencies and amenities and all of a
sudden you make it into like a cool place to live.
That was their plan, except for Belgian law indicated that
that had to be a convent. It couldn't be anything else.
So what did they do. They decided to try to
(15:33):
make a plan to sell the convent as individual convents
that somebody could live in. So they used the word
convent and expanded its meaning and said, oh yes, you
can come here and stay at this nonprofit association and
own a part of the convents. They basically tried to
turn the convent into condos, but still call it a convent.
The Belgian did not go for that. That's like the
(15:55):
worst investment idea I've heard. Yeah, it's good. They well,
the typical businessmen, you know, they're just like, oh, yeah,
this value, I can see. I can sell this to
twenty thirty five year olds for huge profits. And they're like,
nobody wants to live in a convent, dude, even if
it's next to the Lake of Love. They're like, no, no,
they would this will be great. No hot water, no, no, no,
(16:18):
none of the modern amenities. But they would have added
that we But so Ronnie crab is basically he's got
all of these nuns all lined up and fired up
to go run to this way to the south of France.
They sell off all the property, all the holy relics,
all the art in the convent, and they make their
move in January. They actually escape, They get away and
(16:40):
they go down and they're living in the castle. And
he was cool about it. He had a pool installed
in the castle. They had all these luxury food in
the refrigerator. He had them live in large. He was
selling them on the idea of you need to know
these modern luxuries you've never known, and so they go
for it. I mean they had eleven horses. Now they
some debate if the horses were for food or for pleasure.
(17:02):
But regardless, well not that kind of pleasure. There's still nuns.
I think they just wanted to ride them. I don't
know if they wanted to ride them. Now, Ronnie crap
has one problem. Can you guess what it is? Crabs?
I don't know. Ronnie Crabb has one problem. He's got
(17:23):
the nuns down to the south of France, so what
could possibly be his problem? Everything's worth no but good guests,
very good guess. Turns out there is one nun. He's like,
I don't trust this dude. He's candious. Her name is
Sister Clara. The Sister Clara is a novice nun. She's
new to the order. She's still got the ardor of
(17:44):
coming into the church. While all the older nuns have
been in the church and they're losing something. She has
something to gain a lifetime in the church. So she
goes to the Belgian authorities. After she goes to the
bishop and says, this Ronnie Crab has been psychologically abusing
the women. He's been physically abusing the women. He's extorted them,
he has embezzled them, he has swindled them. And the
(18:04):
bishops like, this works for me, Let's take this to
the police. So he then has Sister Clara right out
in Affid David. She gives it to the Belgian authorities
a budget. Authorities are like wait what they did? What?
And now you know the bishop He's like, yes, you
have to do something about this because I told them
they cannot sell the convent because it belongs to the
(18:27):
Church of Rome. But the Church of Rome doesn't have
police like that, so they can't stop them. So we
have to have the Swiss Guard. Well that's to protect
the pope. They don't have somebody going around like you know,
like c s I team that they handled out property
issues for the bishop. Yeah, and like their little fancy
lad outfits, and they just send them out to dispatch
them to the holy water kits and fingerprint kits, holy
(18:50):
water and a scort gun. That is amazing. It's action action.
So the bishop goes to the police because he needs
secular power. In this instance, there's nothing he can do
because the nuns weren't listening to him. So he goes
to the cops, and the cops say, okay, they started
an investigation. They sequester all of the funds that the
(19:12):
nuns have put in the bank. They still have access
to the bank, so they lock out the sisters from
their money. Then they go heading down to find where
they are down in the South of France. Now, if
I say the South of France, what do you picture
lavender fields? Lavender fields? Right, so you feel you figure
like Provence, or maybe do you picture the French Riviera
(19:34):
ever or the wine country? Yeah, yeah, I would say,
Or maybe they went to a yeah, exactly, all beautiful locations, right,
they did not go there. This is not the South
of France they went to he shouldn't even really be
called the South of France. It's more like they went
to southern France. They ended up in the Pyrenees, in
the middle of nowhere, working class industrial town, in a
(19:57):
castle outside of this working class industrial town called Tarbs,
and it is basically right above the border of Spain
in the Pyrenees mountains, like Basque country kind of Yeah,
but not even the cool part. It's it's just a
town that has been where they military used to make bullets.
That's their big industry, bullet makers. So the nuns are
living yeah yeah, Well there's castles all over Europe and
(20:19):
that's just they just litter that place. But the nuns
are in a town known for making bullets. That's where
Ronnie Crabs set them up to live out their golden
years and enjoy the luxuries of modern life. So Ronnie Crabb,
they start to realize may not have had their best
interests at heart. I believe Sister Clara. Yep, Sister Clara
is like, see, I told y'all not to do this.
(20:40):
Now we have to go back to these bishop. The
bishop is more than problematic, you know, like I'd say,
most bishops you can make the arguments are problematic, right,
but this bishop, he has had an issue with the
Mother Superior, Sister Anna. Sister Anna and the Bishop have
(21:01):
been going back and forth for years about whether or
not she's going to listen to what the bishop has
to say. The Bishop is always like, you guys at
the at the convent need to do X, Y and Z,
and she's like, we'll do X, I mean no, you
need to do X, Y and Z. He's like, no, no, no,
we're we have been doing this longer. So they have
basically a power struggle. So he starts putting into play
(21:23):
his plan to seize their convent. She recognizes that she
starts selling out. The nuns all make their plan and
they get away. Now that was the story that Ronnie
Crabs lawyers tell. Apparently, Sister Anna and the Bishop had
a heated moment just before they left town. The Bishop
(21:45):
shows up on a Tuesday night under the cover of darkness.
He shows up at the convent. He has not been
allowed into the convent. The convent. He's demanded their books
because he knows he's heard that they're selling off stuff.
He wants to see it and that they have to
submit their financial accounting to him. They won't do it,
so he shows up with the convent and demands to
see them. Sister Anna is like, all right, come on in,
(22:08):
So they go and they have their little talk. Now
this is like about eleven PM, and according to Mother
Superior Sister Anna, the Bishop tries one last time to
convince her to side with him on this and have
the sale of the convent canceled and she's like, no, son,
I ain't doing that. And he's like, wall, wait a minute,
wait a minute. I order you, by the power of
(22:31):
Rome to do this. Isn't me asking. The Pope wants
this done. If you don't do this, you'll be dismissed
from the church. And she's like, uh no, he should
have tried it. By the power of grace Skull or
the power of grace land, I mean, there's the other
more powerful. And like when a bishop or like a
month senior rolls up to your house and makes those
(22:53):
kind of demands, like say, if you had skipped out
on confirmation class a bunch of times and the on
senior comes to your house, it's like a personal story,
but go on, you know, it's just you know, hypothetically,
if if you kept skipping and he comes to your
house and says, by the power of the Church of Rome,
it's it's intimidating. Oh that's what he's counting on. But
(23:16):
times have changed, so Sister Anna is like, I'm not
into it. She recognizes what the bishop is trying to do.
If he removes her as the head of the convent,
she loses the authority to prove the sale. He gets
power back over the sale. She recognizes this is not
about the nuns of the convent. He's just trying to
run a power game on her. So she's like no.
In fact, not only do I say no, but we're
(23:38):
gonna leave in the days to come. So the bishop,
she tells him, they don't just run away. She tells
them we're fleeing. And then a couple of days later
they make their cut. So now the bishop, using this
other sister Sister Clara and her like affidavit against Ronnie Crabb,
has had the cops go down and retrieve the nuns. Meanwhile,
the nuns have discovered down in the south of France
(23:58):
or southern France, that they are living in a place
once again has no central air, no central heat, but
also has huge holes in the roof and is a
stone building. And it's winter time. So they're sitting there
in a old ass castle in January, freezing their old
asses off. Sister Agnes and poor sister a little sister Agnes.
(24:19):
You can't see, can't here, can't walk, but she's cold,
darn cold. In fact, she's not long for this world.
But she does get to enjoy her final moments with
her sisters free from the bishop. That is the good
news about Sister Agnes. Now, as soon as the sisters
leave and they have been alone, the Bishop has been
(24:40):
working with the powers that be and he's the one
who gets the police to go down there and grab them.
Now the question is is where is Ronnie Crabb? Oh?
I think Ronnie Crabs in the wind. Now, let's put
a pin in that. I'll get back to you with
that after this ad break. So back to our story,
(25:17):
Ronnie Crab, where's our man, Ronnie Crab. Ronnie Crab is
at the premiere of Nuns on the Run in Circus
close but no cigar. Nope. He actually was down in
the south of France with the nuns and he is
arrested by a Belgian authorities on February and brought back
(25:39):
to Belgium. He is arrested on charges of swindling, abuse
of trust, elder abuse, and they seize the farmhouse, the castle,
the fleet of cars. They seize everything and Ronnie Crab.
So now the sisters are living there still underseas property,
so they no longer get to own it. Ronnie c
(26:00):
Ab is taken away from them, and the bishop thinks,
I've gotten everything I want back, right. Well, it turns
out no, because when Ronnie Crabb goes to court, he
gets a lawyer who starts getting the nuns to turn
on the bishop so that the lawyer, his lawyer has
this one sister Josephine, and she's like, we did this
all according to our right minds. This we wanted this
(26:21):
to do this. Ronnie Crab had nothing to do with this.
The nuns start defending Ronnie Krab, but it turns out
that was not the best move because although they defended
Ronnie Crab, Ronnie Crab had actually been embezzling from them.
There's ten million dollars missing out of all the money
that they were able to gather up from their artwork,
hold on ten millionllion dollars and that's missing. So is
(26:46):
that there's still some because the lawyer says, all the
money that they they're trying to gather should be easily found.
It's all in bank accounts or the houses or the cars.
You just sell that stuff and you'll get your money back.
What they do ten million dollars short ten million, So
this is all like from the stuff that they sold
inside the convent because of what the convent was like
(27:06):
one point something at one point formula. And then interestingly,
the bishop and Ronnie Crabb have a back room deal
going on because the bishop knows Ronnie Crabb knows the
commercial interest that he sold the convent to. The bishop
just wants the property back. He doesn't really care about
anything else, so he goes to Ronnie Crab, you can
get me that property back. We can make this good.
And the readisn't we know this is Ronnie Crabb's lawyer
(27:29):
keeps telling things that nobody should know except for the bishop.
When he gives his press conferences, He's like, well, the
Ronnie Crabb says, the nuns will do this. Ronnie Crabb says,
the nuns will do that. Everything he says turns out
to be true and all contingent upon the bishop. So
it turns out that it looks like Ronnie Crab and
the Bishop basically make a backroom deal. Thirty nine days
after him being arrested, charges are dropped, Ronnie Crabb is
(27:52):
allowed to go free. What does he do? He writes
a book about it, where he casts himself as the
libertine bon vivant who teaches these medieval nuns how to
once again live. He calls the book now forgive my
Belgian on this deshat von de r McLaren, which means
the Treasures of the Poor Claire's. Yeah, and in this book,
(28:18):
he says. The book is quote about how the nuns,
who until then had lived in cloisters, decided to set sail.
A young man served as their guide. Yeah, I'll just
let that statement sit there on its own. So they
were living in cloisters, so they couldn't even talk to
each other. No, because I don't think he's right about blisters,
(28:39):
like in terms of the like the cells in which
they slept exactly. I don't think they were silent nuns.
They didn't have that, because you'll understand later why that is.
So this book then gets turned into a TV movie.
It's called ing Passe once Again forgive my Belgian, and
(29:00):
was made for Belgian and French television. I tried to
find this movie because I wanted to see how he
portrayed himself and what the medieval nuns look like. All
I could find were absolutely terrible reviews. Apparently people still
those who remember this movie hated it. So who played
who played Ronnie Crab in the TV movie Oh, a
(29:20):
French actor that neither of us knows. That would be hilarious.
What a remake that would be. Jean Claude van Dam
with a bunch of nuns and he teaches them how
to live and how to kick. They're just a mesmerized
by the power of his thighs. Well, they've never seen
anything like that. So one year after that TV movie
(29:43):
comes out the nuns who meanwhile have been basically fighting
with the church to stay together and to keep their order.
They've been sequestered into two not luxury apartments, but nice
apartments in Bruges on the coast right, so they're basically
put up together. There's eight of them. They're staying in
apartments where there's like kind of for and for, so
they're not doing great. Sister Agnes passes away. Um they're
(30:06):
allowed to stay together, which was a big important thing
for Sister Anna, the mother superior. She's been fighting for
that after they lost her property. She did not want
them to be scattered to the wind by the bishop,
so she fights for that and that's about the only
thing they managed to pull off. So is the diocese
footing the bill for this or that is a larger order,
or their sisters of the Poor Claire and other locations.
(30:27):
There are other Sisters of the Poort Claire, but they
are a very small order relative to the other nuns.
And what they have is the churches primarily paying for
their old age care. But the church doesn't really want
to because these nuns, you know, did what they considered
to be an a legal move, and they still want
to punish them. So they basically make the Belgian state
(30:48):
pay for them as old infirmed people, which the Belican
state does for all of its old infirmed people. So
they're basically living on welfare, so the church does not
really look out for them. Now at that same on
that same time, after they see the TV movie come
out and then they know that there's there's this missing
ten million dollars, they decide to sue Ronnie Crab and
they bring him back into court and he's found to
(31:11):
be basically a bad dude, but it's not guilty of embezzlement.
They cannot nail him on this. He gets away again.
Now what does he do? What's the next time we
see Ronnie Crab pop up into headlines. Ronnie Crab. Okay,
so you've got a con man, swindler, Belgium con mander, guru,
(31:34):
good close guests, politics, well kind of same stuff, you know.
So he gets involved in what's called n v A.
N v A is a Flemish conservative political party. They
are kind of the Belgium first like far right party. Now,
this is part of a Flemish movement in the which
(31:56):
is like a nationalist movement. Now, what do we know
about these nationalists movement? They usually rely on religious conservatives
and having a party leader who has basically ripped off
a bunch of aged nuns not a good look for business.
So the ultra conservatives are like, look, Ronnie Crab, you
gotta get out of here. Man. He's like, what, just
because I did a little jail time ripping off some
nuns I was a young man. What They're like, no, no, no,
(32:20):
And so he goes and disappears. And that's the last
we hear of Ronnie Crab Right now. The best part
of this story for me, at least as a you know,
a former Catholic, you know, because we both went to
Catholic school. Right now, you had mostly nuns, right, I
did the high school that I went to as an
(32:40):
all girls high school and it was attached to a convent,
and it was half of those giant, old, gorgeous building
and half was the high school and half was the convent.
And if you like I did, tore your knee up
in sports and had to wear a mobilizer. We got
to use the elevator in the convent and it was
(33:01):
one of the old ones with the gate. It allowed
me to walk through the convent every day to get
because there was a three story building in order to
get to class. And you got to see how the
nuns lived there, Yeah, and it was it was. They
took the poverty thing seriously. They had really bare cots
in their rooms and um they had a parlor with
(33:22):
a radio and they were all like super Oakland as fans. Yeah, yeah,
it was all all we all were are. And they
would listen to the games on the radio. And parents
were always saying we could buy you a TV and
they said, no, we don't want it. And then their
kitchens were always bear and parents would buy groceries and
they would take the bare minimum stuff out and donate
(33:43):
the rest to the They're the real heart of the
Catholic Church. Yeah, and and the you know thing is
it's like they embody so much of what you want
just in human beings. I mean, yeah, there are some
like hard as nuns of course, No, they're the ones
who grow chalk, hit you with the ruler. I mean yeah,
there's definitely the old school like fire and Brimstone, Fatigan
(34:04):
one nuner. Sure. But then I think my favorite of
the zany nuns. I had a lot of zany nun
teachers who you know, Sister Mary Elizabeth, my orchestra instructors,
just crazy lady, she was so fun. Or Sister Paul Gerard,
she had pica pika. She ate chalk in biology class
(34:24):
and no one really wanted to make her feel bad
about it, but we all like to watch her drag
her fingers through the chalk tray and then stuck on.
It was like the only food she was getting. Yeah,
they were just you know, they're really they're they're they're
good people. Now. See, I went to all boys Catholic school,
so we had the rectory was priests. They lived on
on campus, and uh, it was not how you described
(34:46):
the nuns living at Jesuit. It was the exact same thing.
You go out or where did the priests live? And
it was like not a what a chateau basically's like
one of the Spanish homes where you have a courtyard
in the middle, and they were releas fruit trees. It
was just like really nice. And they, like my favorite
priest had a red sports car. I mean, these were
like guys who had figured out a good scam. I
(35:08):
was like, damn, well we have. The other thing is
you can't paint everyone. This applies to everything. You can't
paint people with the broadbrush. True. Alright, so both of us,
having come from these Catholic schools, you've got to be
rooting for these nuns, right, I mean absolutely reading for
these nuns. And then they get screwed by this con man,
Ronnie Crab. He goes off and joins Belgian far right
(35:29):
politics and he has his own little thing. The bishop.
We won't even get into him, but just assume he
is what you would assume of a bishop of that time.
And finally, though, I would like to give you at
least one good point of how this story goes and
has a nice sweet ending for two nuns. Are you ready? Okay?
(35:53):
So remember Mother super Sister Anna and you remember the
snitch Sister Clara. I think snitch is a strong word.
She was. I I appreciate what she did, but she snitched.
I ain't gonna like, you know, double talking. So she
went to the Bishop of Bruge. But the reason why
she snitched, and this is where your instincts are solid,
(36:15):
it was out of love. She was looking to protect
the other sisters. She saw them losing sight of their mission,
and specifically one nun in particular. Can you guess who
no not to night? Sister Anna, the Mother Superior and
the novice had a thing. So it turns out that
(36:39):
the Bishop of Bruge asked the nuns to return to
the fold. They would then be barred from returning to
their convent, of course, and he would split them up
and send them to different convents. And then Sister On
was like, uh, there is no question down in you know.
This is a quote from Sister On and she says,
there's no question in Paisson, which is the little town
outside of Rbs where their castle was, we found perfect happiness.
(37:03):
We don't care at all about the lack of comfort
in our new home. We feel closer to the Lord
there than to Bruges. So they actually got to have
their spiritual awakening and complete like harmony with the Lord.
So they got that. But then on top of that,
the heart also got what the heart wanted. The nuns
who were returned, you know, to the pair of apartments.
(37:25):
They're fine. Sister Agnes passes away, but Sister Anna, the
Mother Superior, she rekindled her friendship with a woman named
gilloman lamb Brex. And the reason why you haven't heard
that name is Gillomene lamb Brex is the name of
Sister Clara after she left the Order of the Poor Claire's.
She leaves the nunnery, she goes out and she buys
(37:47):
a house. She gets this house, a little farmhouse out
on the edge. It's right next to this small stream,
a picturesque place, and it's in the heart of the
our dance forest. And and so she is there. And
who goes to join her, Sister Anna. I love that
Mother Superior and the novice end up together in a
small little farmhouse next to a stream in the r
(38:09):
Dan's and they get to enjoy that life together. That's
so lovely. I'm so happy for them. So what is
our ridiculous takeaway from this story. I think the ridiculous
takeaway would be it's ridiculous to mess with some nuns.
You can only push a woman so far, and you
can only push your nun half as far as that exactly. Now, Personally,
(38:33):
I think the Catholic Church needs to recognize that the
nuns are the best thing they got going. And it's
ridiculous that they keep thinking that anybody wants to give
a f about the priests, because I'm telling you what,
the nuns and the only way you're going to save
that church. Well, they're living the truth of it. They're
they're actually living it out of being really dedicated to
(38:54):
social justice and they're a real deal. They're living according
to the you know, the beliefs of the church well,
and the core of like I think every religious belief
is just to love right, and like, you know, aside
from the nuns who are mean and throw things at
you in class if you're muttering in the back of
the room, I don't know, hypothetically, you know, the truth is,
it's just love, right, and they just they want to serve,
(39:17):
they want to serve others out of love. And so
you see, like Clara doing that exactly. So she went
with her beliefs and then it turned out it worked
really nice. Now, just to put a fine point on
all of this, a couple of years back, I was
at the u N Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and
I gotta see Glorious Steinhem talk, right, and she said
(39:41):
something that is stuck with me ever since then. She
basically compared. She said, do you know the big trick
that the priest did? Right? Not me and everybody listening,
We're like, no, what's the big trees trick the priest did?
She's like, they stole motherhood from women. You're like, what,
how does that work? And she says, think about it.
You are can do a church. There is the outer
(40:01):
vestible inter vestible, and then there is the long central
channel leading up to an altar. Right, that's the form
of a church. What does that sound like? A vagina
outer labia, inner labia, a central canal leading to an
altar where the consecration of life occurs. Right, but in
this place we have men in skirts promising to give
(40:22):
life afterlife, which is more important than the life that
you were given by your actual mother. I was like, whoa,
that's crazy, glorious steinhum, but it's stuck with me and
I'm not necessarily saying she's right. But if you think
about that, that has been like the priest's whole thing
forever has been tastically trying to take the power of
women and make it their own power and being like oh,
(40:42):
and then these nuns are like, uh, yeah, I love
them for it. Okay, now that is ridiculous. You win,
That is ridiculous. Well, thanks for joining us, and I
am Elizabeth Dunton. You can find us online at Ridiculous
Crime on Twitter and Instagram. Or if you've got a
(41:03):
tip for us about a ridiculous crime that you'd like
to hear about, or maybe one that you've committed, we
want to hear about it, so you can write to
us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and we'd
love to hear from you. Until next time, Catch you later.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett's
(41:25):
produced and edited by Dave Kirsten. The theme song is
by Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. The executive producers are
Ben Ballin and Noel Brown. Ridiculous Crime is a production
of I Heart Radio four more podcasts to my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
(41:47):
listen to your favorite shows.
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