Spain’s Catholic Church has excommunicated a group of 10 nuns after they refused to renounce their allegiance to a rebel former priest.

The sisters, who live in a 15th-century convent in Belorado on the St James Way pilgrimage route near Burgos, said last month they no longer recognised rule by the Vatican and claimed they were being “persecuted” over a real estate deal.

The cloistered nuns, who belong to the Poor Clares order and were famed for the sweets they made, including a mojito-flavoured confection, aligned themselves with a renegade priest, considered a heretic by Church authorities.

The nuns, led by their mother superior, Sister Isabel de la Trinidad, said they no longer recognised the authority of Pope Francis or the Spanish Church hierarchy and swore allegiance to Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco.