A 31 years old nun from El Salvador gave birth to a baby last wednesday, after she had been hospitalized for what she thought just a bad stomach ache. It happened in Rieti, a 40 thousand people town 50 miles north of Rome, in Italy. Mother and child are fine, as reported by the hospital San Camillo De Lellis, where the birth took place.
The nun lived in a monastry thereby, the cloyster of Campomoro, where her sisters belonging to the Disciples of Jesus order are in charge of a nursing home. She had no idea she was pregnant, and none of her sisters ever suspected. The 7.7 pounds newborn was a complete shock to averyone. A shock they all will talk about for a long long time: in the whole region and on the social media as well.
What's gonna happen to the nun and her child? "Sure she won't be allowed to proceed in her religious life, while the baby being grown in an orphanage", said the bishop Gianfranco Girotti, who's been Regent of the Apostolic Penitentiary (one of the three tribunals of the Roman Curia) for more than 10 years, till June 2012. "She'll have to leave her religious order and take care of her child", continues the bishop, "and since she's alone in a foreign country her order will certainly help her".
The nun broke her vote of celibacy, but she won't be anathematized. "Leaving the monastry and her life as a nun is enough as a punishment. The will to help must always prevail", commented bishop Girotti, "Especially when a new life is born".
And so be it: the other new mothers in the hospital, as they knew what happened, immediately bought some baby dresses and collected some money to help the newborn and the nun, who had reached the hospital completely unprepared.
The baby will be called Francis, since Rieti lays in the valley where St. Francis of Assisi built the first Nativity scene in history, in 1227.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
