Katy Perry has technically won the battle against the nuns whose convent she desires, but the last remaining nun, Sister Rita Callanan, is still fighting.
The Daily Beast checked in on Sister Rita, who lives alone in a convent in Los Angeles with a 19-year old, partially blind and deaf cat named Princess. Since the death of Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, who collapsed during a post-judgement court hearing in Los Angeles, Sister Rita is now the last person fighting to oppose the sale of a convent that Perry wanted to buy. In 2014, Perry agreed to pay the Archdiocese of Los Angeles $14.5 million in cash for the convent; then two of the five nuns who claimed they owned the convent protested this sale, saying that they wanted to sell it to hotelier Dana Hollister. The nuns eventually prevailed, selling the hotel to Hollister, but the Catholic Church intervened, saying that the nuns didn’t own the property, but the church did.
In 2016, Perry won her court battle and the freaking convent is now hers. Since then, the nuns have been doing their best to get the convent back, but as they are all elderly and, honestly, very tired from a life devoted to both the Lord and this inane fight against a pop star who demands that the world bends to her will, it’s hard to see how much longer this can go on.
Sister Rita is now battling the archdiocese and Archbishop José Horacio Gómez, who has apparently vowed to provide for Sister Rita by way of rent, bills, a housekeeper, and a stipend, all of which serve as a reward for Sister’s service to the parish. However, her continued legal fight might be causing some unforeseen repercussions. From the Daily Beast:
Sister Rita says her stipend was reduced and she got a cancellation notice from a health insurance company after a bill was left unpaid by the archdiocese.
“When the archbishop says he is taking care of us, I say I got a notice of cancellation of service. Do you say that is taking care of us? I say no.”
There’s a GoFundMe for her legal bills, if you’re so inclined to help, and the sisters have a website that outlines the gist of this legal saga, which has been waging on in one form or another since 2014.
“I just feel that Katy Perry is used to getting all she wants,” Sister Rita told the Daily Beast, “and to her money means everything, and to her, whatever Katy wants, Katy gets.”