Katy Perry Nun Lawsuit: Rulings, Collapse, and Lost Sale

The Katy Perry nun lawsuit was a multi-year dispute over an eight-acre former convent in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, in which the singer and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles won every major courtroom battle against two elderly sisters and a rival buyer, obtained more than $15 million in judgments, and still never closed on the property.¹

Perry’s Offer and the Nuns Who Refused

In 2013, Perry offered $14.5 million in cash for the property at 3431-3441 Waverly Drive, a 22,000-square-foot villa-style estate near Griffith Park. Under the proposed terms, she would pay $10 million in cash and provide an alternative property, valued at $4.5 million, for a house of prayer on the convent grounds. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles accepted. Perry intended to live there.²³

The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary had pooled their money to buy the property in 1972 and used it as their convent for decades. By 2011, the last five sisters had moved out because the building was too costly to maintain and no longer suited their physical needs.⁴²

Two of them, Sister Catherine Rose Holzman and Sister Rita Callanan, objected to selling to Perry. They considered themselves the rightful owners because they had bought the place, and they did not want the singer living in their former home. Sister Callanan told reporters she had researched Perry online and “wasn’t happy with any of it.”⁵ Sister Holzman wrote to the archdiocese that a sale would force the sisters “to violate our canonical vows to the Catholic Church” and that “Katy Perry represents everything we don’t believe in.”⁶

In May 2015, at the archbishop’s request, Perry met with the two sisters. She sang “Oh Happy Day” and showed them a tattoo of Jesus on her wrist. They were not persuaded.⁷

The Rival Sale to Dana Hollister

Instead, Holzman and Callanan cut their own deal with Dana Hollister, a Los Angeles interior designer and nightlife entrepreneur. On paper the offer was higher at $15.5 million, but Hollister paid only $100,000 upfront, issued a $10 million promissory note, and made the terms conditional on getting zoning approvals for a hotel and restaurant on the site. The sisters preferred her in part because she agreed to keep the property open to the public.¹⁷

Hollister moved in and started renovating. The archdiocese sued to void the transaction, arguing that the sisters had no authority to sell without approval from the archbishop and the Vatican.⁸

Who Had the Right to Sell

That was the core legal question. The sisters said the property was theirs because they had bought it with their own money. The archdiocese pointed to a 1992 agreement, approved by the Vatican, in which then-Archbishop Roger Mahony took on financial support for the sisters on the condition that the convent could not be sold or transferred without the archdiocese’s written permission.⁶

Canon law reinforced the archdiocese’s position. Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, church property belongs to the diocese, and any sale exceeding $7.5 million in a large archdiocese requires the approval of the bishop and the Pope.⁷ The nuns’ attorney had told Hollister that the 1992 agreement was “broken and not enforceable.” The Los Angeles Superior Court disagreed.⁹

The sisters also argued that a Vatican document cited in the proceedings had been mistranslated and that Rome was still considering the sale. That argument did not carry.¹⁰

Behind the legal filings was open distrust. The sisters accused the archdiocese of neglect and broken promises and feared they would never see the money. Sister Holzman told Billboard: “That’s why they want to sell to Katy Perry. They want the money for you know what… We won’t see a dime of it.” The archdiocese had paid $660 million in 2007 to settle clergy sexual abuse claims. It said any revenue from the convent sale would go back to the sisters’ institute.¹¹²

The Rulings and Damages

On April 13, 2016, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Bowick voided Hollister’s purchase and rescinded the deed she had recorded on the property, ruling that the sisters had not obtained the required authorization from the archbishop.¹²

In a related proceeding, Judge Bowick had ordered the sisters to turn over the books, records, and assets of their institute to the archdiocese. The California Court of Appeal reversed that order in July 2017. Justice Thomas Willhite wrote that it “improperly granted relief that Plaintiffs had not requested in their complaint, against parties who were not named as defendants in the complaint” and was based on findings from a ruling that had itself been vacated.⁵

The case against Hollister went to a jury in November 2017 in Los Angeles Superior Court, case number BC585604. Jurors found that she had intentionally interfered with Perry’s contractual purchase and had acted with “malice, oppression or fraud.” She was ordered to pay $3.47 million in attorney fees to the archdiocese and $1.57 million to Perry’s company, Bird Nest LLC.¹³ In a second phase in December 2017, a jury added $10 million in punitive damages, two-thirds to the archdiocese and one-third to Perry’s company.¹⁴

Hollister then filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Under a later settlement, the $10 million in punitive damages was reduced to $6.5 million. Perry’s company and the archdiocese became unsecured judgment creditors and junior lienholders on Hollister’s Silver Lake mansion, known as Paramour.¹⁵

Sister Holzman’s Death in Court

On March 9, 2018, Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, 89, collapsed and died in a Los Angeles courtroom. She was attending a bankruptcy hearing tied to Hollister’s finances, not a hearing directly involving the convent sale.¹⁶

Hours before her death, Holzman and Callanan had given an interview to a Los Angeles Fox affiliate in which Holzman asked Perry to “please stop” the purchase, saying, “It’s not doing anyone any good except hurting a lot of people.”⁴ Widely repeated accounts framed the remarks as a dying plea to Perry in court, but they were made in the earlier television interview, and no active legal proceeding between Perry and the sisters was pending at the time.¹⁶ Afterward, Sister Callanan told the New York Post that Perry “has blood on her hands.”⁷

Why Perry Never Got the House

Winning in court did not deliver the property. The Vatican required Perry to secure a replacement property for the house of prayer on the convent grounds before the sale could close, and that condition was never met. Her option to buy expired.¹⁷ As of the most recent reporting, the former convent remained with the archdiocese, and it was unclear who, if anyone, would ultimately purchase it.¹⁸ By the end of the saga, only one sister from the order remained, placed under the care of another religious group.¹⁹

1
Billboard. Timeline: Katy Perry’s Legal Dispute Over the Los Feliz Convent
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Los Angeles Times. Los Feliz Convent Dispute
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ABC7. Katy Perry Wins Major Court Victory in Battle for Former Los Feliz Convent
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NPR. Nun Involved in Katy Perry Convent Lawsuit Collapses and Dies in Court
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Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Mansion Case Ruling
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Hollywood Reporter. Inside Katy Perry’s Real Estate Soap Opera
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Business Insider. Katy Perry Nuns Los Angeles Convent Sale Feud Timeline
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NBC Los Angeles. Katy Perry Los Angeles Archdiocese Nuns Convent Sale
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Courthouse News Service. Developer Says Convent Promised Katy Perry
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Duquesne University Juris Magazine. The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary v. Katy Perry
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Billboard. Katy Perry Real Estate Battle With Nuns and the Catholic Church
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Hollywood Reporter. Katy Perry Convent Property Ruling
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Variety. Katy Perry Archdiocese Convent Ruling
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BBC News. Katy Perry Wins Convent Court Battle
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Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Bankruptcy Case Ruling
16
America Magazine. Everything You’re Hearing About Katy Perry and LA Catholic Sisters
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Realtor.com. Katy Perry Nuns Convent Sale
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Architectural Digest. Katy Perry Real Estate Controversies
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Global Sisters Report. Sundance Film Features Immaculate Heart Community’s 50-Year Journey