The 'nun' with a bad habit arives in Wales

A SELF-PROCLAIMED nun convicted of religious harassment has travelled to Wales to spread her message.

The Catholic Church has officially urged people to steer clear of Sister Ruth Augustus, who it says belongs to an order which she has made up.

Augustus – who has spent years touring the world with a three foot tall fibreglass Virgin Mary statue – was arrested after telling Muslims in London: “You’re probably terrorists – get back to your own country.”

 he was fined £200 by Westminster magistrates for the offence.

But the 70-year-old told Wales on Sunday she was glad to be in Wales for a month-long tour (but without the statue).

She has already been to Cardiff and Pontypridd and is planning to visit Swansea, Barry, Flint, Cardigan, Aberystwyth, Welshpool and Wrexham, simply chatting to people in streets and shops in a bid to spread her religious message.

Clad in a Pope Benedict T-shirt, wearing a rosary and clutching a Pope Benedict bag, Augustus, from Birmingham, said she was touring Wales because a Christian Britain was important to her.

“The whole civilisation comes from our Christian faith,” she said.

“Before that people were wandering around eating each other, like they did in Africa.”

And Augustus – who claims to have become a nun when she was 24 – insisted she was appealing her conviction, which stems from 2006. But a Church insider said: “She is not a nun.

“She is not a nun that has been established with the Irish church authority.”

She claims to be based with the “One in Christ” order in Cork.

But our source said: “The order which she claims to belong to does not exist. She has a very chequered past.”

Sister Ruth once publicly claimed nuclear war would end the world in 2006 and before Pope John Paul II died she announced the next Pope would be the devil. She has since revised both positions.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church said: “There is nothing we can do about her calling herself a nun, but she is not from any order recognised by the Church and she is not under any authority from us to go around peddling her tales of doom.

“We would strongly dissuade anyone from having anything to do with her.” But Augustus insisted to Wales on Sunday she was legitimate, calling the spokesman a “filthy lying rat”.

The self-proclaimed nun has sparked controversy on numerous occasions, making the US media in 2002 when she travelled to Croatia’s first ever Gay Pride parade.

Time magazine reported she shouted: “You’re dirty pigs,” “stupid faggots,” and “carriers of AIDS-infected seed”. She claimed to Wales on Sunday she did not know what the phrases meant.

Newport’s Reverend Martin Reynolds is the former communications director for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.

He said: “She is living in a world of illusion that she is a nun.

“She has grabbed hold of all the hateful things about Christianity – a lot of people do – and she is running with them.”

SIC: WOS/UK