This is easily my favorite story of the day.

OK. I’ll admit I have a bit of an anti-authority streak in me. A bit. But this story just really connects with the middle finger part of me.

So here’s the upshot. It looks to me like a bunch of nuns were forcibly retired because they were old as dirt and living in a really expensive convent to upkeep. Despite being in their 80’s, the nuns didn’t take to retirement living. So the busted out. They got a locksmith to bust them back into their old convent.

And people are loving this. So the diocese doesn’t know what to do about it because who wants to go up against octagenarian nuns. You don’t win that pr battle. Ever.

I don’t know if any of you remember the old move TAPS, starring Timothy Hutton and Tom Cruise. They’re in a military academy that is getting shut down. But they’ve come to love the place so they take up arms to keep it open. It gets real. So I’m waiting for the sisters to get on the roof like Korean grocers or something.

I love this story.

NPR: Morning Mass is underway at the chapel of Schloss Goldenstein, a convent in Elsbethen, an Austrian parish nestled between the church spires of Salzburg and the arresting backdrop of the Alps. Sister Rita is delighted to see so many people in attendance.

As Catholic congregation numbers dwindle in Austria, Sister Rita says you’d expect the church to be equally thrilled by such tightly packed pews, but 82-year-old Rita and fellow Sisters Regina, 86, and Bernadette, 88, are in their superior’s bad books.

“People are calling us the rebellious sisters!” Rita says with a giggle and a glint in her eye.

The three Augustinian sisters — who use only their religious names — recently ran away from a nursing home and, with the help of a local locksmith, broke back into the convent that used to be their home. Rita jokes that they are octogenarian squatters.

Supporters of three rebel nuns in their 80s who had graced international headlines after fleeing their care home to occupy their former convent in Austria’s Salzburg province flocked to the nunnery Saturday in a show of solidarity.

Giggles aside, Rita says they were taken to a nursing home against their will two years ago when church authorities shuttered the cloisters as nun numbers diminished.

“When the opportunity arose to return to our beloved convent, we didn’t wait for his permission”
The parishioners who hired a U-Haul and helped the sisters stage their getaway are now joined by a whole host of locals eager to help the sisters grow old on their own terms.

Sister Rita says they simply had to act. “I wanted to speak to the prelate to tell him how unhappy we were but we couldn’t reach him,” she explains. “When the opportunity arose to return to our beloved convent, we didn’t wait for his permission. But I don’t want him to be angry with us.”

But their superior, Provost Markus Grasl, is not pleased with the sisters’ dissent. And when their getaway made headlines last month, he brought in a PR firm specializing in damage control. So Harald Schiffl now speaks on the clergyman’s behalf.

“It goes without saying that the sisters were consulted before being moved into the nursing home,” Schiffl says. “And it’s understandable that after decades of living and working in one place, such a move is not easy.”

Schiffl explains that Sisters Rita, Bernadette and Regina were the last three remaining nuns in the cloister and that staying there was unwise as they aged. He stresses that the provost’s decision to move them was made with their best interests in mind.

But the sisters have no intention of hanging up their wimples; they entered the cloister on the understanding they would serve there — and at the adjoining convent school — for the rest of their lives.

And their reach now goes far beyond the parish; the nuns now have their own Instagram account, currently with 70,000 followers.

Schiffl, the provost’s spokesperson, says the nuns’ social media presence is unbecoming of their order and that their superiors take a dim view of it.

“Without all the media interest, a viable and sustainable solution would have been found long ago, causing far less damage to the church,” Schiffl asserts.