Spanish Nun Ousted from Convent over Facebook Use

By Doug Huntington, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, February 22, 2011

A Spanish nun was recently banished from her order for allegedly spending too much time on Facebook.

News broke out last week that 54-year-old Maria Jesus Galan, also known as "Sister Internet," was asked to leave her Dominican convent for being on Facebook too much.

She is currently residing with her mother.

Galan had entered the order at age 21 and spent the next 34 years inside the convent.

Her convent – the Santo Domingo el Real convent in Toledo, Spain – did not have a computer until 10 years ago. Ironically, the Mother Superior of the convent convinced the other nuns to acquire a computer as a means to reduce the convent's access to the outside world.

"It enabled us do things such as banking online and saved us having to make trips into the city," Galan told the Telegraph.

Galan made further use of the computer by digitally-scanning pages from ancient texts stored in the convent's library for access online. The painstaking work so impressed the local government that it awarded her recognition in 2008. The subsequent news coverage placed her in the limelight.

As Galan's fame grew, so did her circle of friends on Facebook. This subsequently brought disapproval by fellow nuns. Tensions "made life impossible" for Galan, and she was asked to leave.

The Dominican order has at this moment refused to comment on the departure of Galan.

Since her banishment, Galan has received a flood of sympathetic postings from Facebook friends on her new fan page called "Maria Jesus Galan – sor Internet (Sister Internet)" – which has gained more than 8,000 fans in four days.