![\"\u05e7\u05d9\u05d9\u05d8\u05d9](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/r1500rU9hWe_0_0_3000_2000_0_x-large.jpg\" "\\"Katy")
<\/a><\/p>\nKaty Perry <\/p>\n
(Photo: Monica Schipper\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
In the 1950s, the estate was sold to Daniel and Bernadine Donahue. After Bernadine died in 1968, Daniel sold the property for $600,000 to the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The sisters purchased it in 1971, when Perry was still 13 years away from being born, and turned it into their convent.<\/p>\n
For decades, the sisters lived there and maintained the property with money earned through teaching. But their numbers gradually declined. By 2011, the convent had gone from 52 sisters to only five, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles removed them from the estate and began planning its sale.<\/p>\n
In April 2014, the archdiocese reached a deal to sell the property to Perry for $14.5 million. She reportedly planned to turn the former convent into a private mansion for herself, her mother and her grandmother, a relatively straightforward celebrity real estate purchase that would soon become anything but straightforward.<\/p>\n
The nuns had made their own deal. They agreed to sell the property to Los Angeles restaurateur Dana Hollister for $15.5 million, with Hollister hoping to convert the convent into a boutique hotel. The sisters may have taken vows of poverty, but they still managed to negotiate a higher price than the archdiocese.<\/p>\n
Their opposition to Perry was not purely financial. Sister Catherine Rose Holzman had researched the singer and found an interview in which Perry joked about selling her soul to the devil. Holzman was appalled, although Perry had only joked about doing it rather than actually producing the relevant paperwork.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn selling to Katy Perry, we feel we are being forced to violate our canonical vows to the Catholic Church,\u201d Holzman said. She later put it even more bluntly: \u201cKaty Perry represents everything we don\u2019t believe in. It would be a sin to sell to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another sister, Rita Callanan, also examined Perry\u2019s work. \u201cI found Katy Perry and I found her videos and, if it\u2019s all right to say, I wasn\u2019t happy with any of it,\u201d she said, delivering what may have been the most restrained pop-music review of Perry\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
In January 2015, the nuns sent a cease-and-desist letter to Archbishop Jos\u00e9 Gomez, who had arranged the sale. Hoping to avoid a prolonged battle, Gomez organized a meeting between Perry and the five remaining sisters on May 26, 2015.<\/p>\n
Perry tried to reassure them that she had not, in fact, sold her soul to Satan. She showed them the word \u201cJesus\u201d tattooed on her wrist and explained her religious upbringing. Her parents were Pentecostal pastors who raised her under strict Christian rules. As children, Perry and her siblings listened almost exclusively to gospel music, called deviled eggs \u201cangeled eggs\u201d and were reportedly forbidden from eating Lucky Charms because the word \u201cluck\u201d reminded their mother of Lucifer.<\/p>\n Perry had also begun her career as a Christian singer under her birth name, Katy Hudson. Her debut album sold fewer than 200 copies, after which she changed direction rather dramatically and found commercial success with songs including \u201cI Kissed a Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n To further demonstrate her spiritual credentials, Perry sang \u201cOh Happy Day\u201d for the sisters. Unfortunately, she had to pull out her phone to find the lyrics.<\/p>\n \u201cShe pulls out her phone to get the words for \u2018Oh Happy Day,\u2019\u201d Callanan recalled. \u201cI was looking at my attorney thinking, what on earth?\u201d<\/p>\n The sisters applauded politely, perhaps because even a bitter property dispute has limits on acceptable awkwardness. Holzman later summarized the meeting: \u201cShe was nice. She told us why she wanted the property and then sang a song and left.\u201d<\/p>\n The meeting did not change their minds. But Perry\u2019s pop videos and Satan joke were only part of the dispute. The deeper fight concerned control of the property and the money from its sale.<\/p>\n For most of the convent\u2019s history, the sisters had funded and operated it independently. In 1992, when their numbers had declined to 35, then-Archbishop Roger Mahony wrote to the Vatican proposing that the archdiocese provide financial support, with the condition that the estate could not be sold without church approval.<\/p>\n Documents cited in accounts of the case indicated that the sisters continued paying for the estate\u2019s maintenance themselves. They argued that the archdiocese wanted control of a property it had not supported and feared that they would never receive the proceeds from its sale.<\/p>\n Those suspicions were sharpened by the archdiocese\u2019s enormous financial obligations arising from the clergy abuse scandal. In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to more than 500 victims of sexual abuse by clergy.<\/p>\n Holzman alleged that the convent money would help cover that settlement rather than support the remaining sisters. The archdiocese maintained that the proceeds would be used to care for them.<\/p>\n The estate also had its own troubling history. Between 1991 and 2008, Archbishop Mahony sent three priests facing molestation allegations to stay at the convent. All three were arrested there and later received prison sentences. It was not exactly the sort of detail likely to strengthen the sisters\u2019 confidence in the archdiocese\u2019s stewardship.<\/p>\n The battle now had Perry and the Catholic hierarchy on one side, with the nuns and a Los Angeles restaurateur on the other. Anyone expecting the Catholic Church and the convent\u2019s sisters to form the natural alliance had clearly underestimated the unifying power of Southern California real estate.<\/p>\n In July 2015, a court rejected Hollister\u2019s attempted purchase, calling it a bad deal. Although she had offered $15.5 million, only $100,000 was reportedly in cash, while Perry was prepared to pay $10 million upfront.<\/p>\n Perry and the archdiocese then sued Hollister for interfering with their agreement. Perry\u2019s lawyers accused the restaurateur of taking advantage of vulnerable elderly nuns and malevolently persuading them to oppose the church, though the sisters\u2019 previous experiences suggested that little persuasion may have been necessary.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/BkPXmLR4zl_0_0_928_619_0_x-large.jpg\" "\\"The")
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![\"Sister](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/rkycX8CVfl_0_0_960_640_0_x-large.jpg\" "\\"Sister")
<\/a>![\"Srs.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/r1xiEUCEGg_0_0_560_350_0_x-large.jpg\" "\\"Srs.")
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