DENYING PREGNANCY, NUN GIVES BIRTH IN ITALY

Campomoro, Italy, 16 Rabi’ul Awwal 1435/18 January 2014 (MINA) – A Salvadorean nun who denied being pregnant gave birth in Italy this week after she felt stomach cramps in her convent and was rushed to hospital.

“I did not know I was pregnant. I only felt a stomach pain,” the nun was quoted as saying at the hospital, the Italian news agency ANSA reported as quoted by Huffington Post and Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).

ANSA said the 31-year-old woman had named the baby boy Francesco (Francis) which La Repubblica said she gave birth on Wednesday. Italian media reported on Friday.

The nun belongs to the “Little Disciples of Jesus” convent in Campomoro near Rieti, which manages an old people’s home and reports said she would keep the baby.

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Her fellow nuns were quoted saying they were “very surprised”.

Despite sex scandal issues among priests and nuns, for decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country’s most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican’s backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.

A year-long Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by websites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States.

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The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the AP tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros (dollars) in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6 billion in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or $1.5 billion due to victims in Ireland.

However, the numbers still stand out in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago. They point to an increasing willingness among the Italian public and — slowly — within the Vatican itself to look squarely at a tragedy where the reported cases may only just be the tip of the iceberg. The Italian church will not release the numbers of cases reported or of court settlements.

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The implications of priest abuse loom large in Italy: with its 50,850 priests in a nation of 60 million, Italy counts more priests than all of South America or Africa. In the United States — where the Vatican counts 44,700 priests in a nation of 300 million — more than 4,000 Catholic clergy have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.(T/P03/P04/mirajnews.com)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)