Nuns aren’t the typical choice to push pro-war narratives, but the Church of Sweden found that a convent was actually working to raise money for Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Nicknamed ‘Z-Nuns’, a notorious Belarusian convent which was selling trinkets to churchgoers last year was found to have links to Russia’s military intelligence.
The Church of Sweden has since issued warnings to other churches, after 20 churches in the Nordic country were found to have sisters from the St Elisabeth working for pro-war initiatives.
The nuns had previously been pictured in occupied Ukraine, working with Russian soldiers to ‘boost morale’ and even wearing military fatigues.
Michael Öjermo, the rector of Täby, Sweden, said he wasn’t aware of the convent’s history before inviting them, an investigation from The Telegraph found.
The revelation prompted the Church of Sweden – known for its friendliness and outreach – to issue a sobering warning to all other Catholic churches, telling them about the ‘spy nuns’.
In the statement, it was explained that the sisters of St Elisabeth’s use their income to support Russian nationalism, support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and have close ties with GRU’.
Those small trinkets the nuns had been selling in Swedish churches were actually being used to support Putin’s war machine.
‘The Church of Sweden advises against supporting their activities in any way.’
Rector Öjermo said he knew the convent was from Belarus – which is a key ally of Russia – but in his ministry, he had always worked with Christians in ‘dictatorships’.
He added: ‘I’m old enough to remember when ministers came from the German Democratic Republic [Soviet East Germany]… if three came, two would be for real and one would be a spy for the Stasi.
‘So, to me, it wasn’t a big problem to meet people from a church that I knew was dependent on a state that wasn’t ‘OK’ in my eyes.
‘What I understood this time, that I didn’t understand before, is that they can be used as propaganda. I didn’t make that conclusion before, and I see that can be a problem.’
The head of the Church of Sweden’s crisis planning unit, Kristina Smith, said they have warned the Russian Orthodox Church about renting church facilities, after it was revealed they wanted to use facilities near military installations.
‘It’s a new thing for Sweden as a society… the full-scale invasion of 2022 was a rude awakening for a lot of Swedes,’ she said.
‘We prided ourselves on not being at war for 200 years, for being a nice country, a country that everyone wanted to be nice towards, but I think it was an awakening for the entire country that that is not really the case.’
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