One afternoon this past summer, a car sped out of the gates of a convent on the outskirts of a sleepy village in northern Spain and kept going until it reached another convent 85 miles away.

Behind the wheel was a nun. In the passenger’s seat was another nun. They sprinted in the white Nissan along a country road lined with sunflower fields and wooden telegraph poles — desperate to save the way of life of their order, the Poor Clares of Belorado, which has been around since 1358, and to retain control of their three convents.

The Vatican had excommunicated the sisters and a local archbishop had threatened them with eviction because they had broken with the Roman Catholic Church. And though the Poor Clares of Belorado own two of the buildings they live in and had recently signed an agreement to buy a third, the Vatican had appointed a local archbishop to administer their properties and finances.

ImageA key to the main door of the Orduña convent.Credit...Ana Maria Arevalo Gosen for The New York Times

The frenzied car trip came after the nuns heard that the archbishop was planning to seize spare keys from janitors and change the locks on two of the convents. “They drove like fury,” said Sister María Belén de la Trinidad, 51.

By the time the two nuns reached the convent called the Derio, the lock on the front door had been changed and the other doors bolted from the inside. The nuns found an open back door, sneaked in and regained access.

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