The Catholic Church has launched an investigation into two nuns who returned to Italy pregnant after separate missionary trips to Africa.
The two women of African descent, who are from different orders in Sicily, reportedly got pregnant while on two different missions in their home countries, the Independent reported.
One of the nuns, a 34-year-old based at a convent in the northeastern town of Militello Rosmarino in Messina, discovered she was pregnant after going to the hospital with severe abdominal pains.
The second nun, a mother superior caring for the elderly in the southeastern city of Ispica, in Ragusa, has also discovered that she is pregnant.
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“There is consternation at this news. It appears that both women were back in their home nations and obviously had some form of sexual encounter. An investigation has been launched. They both breached strict rules of chastity but the welfare of their children is uppermost,” a Catholic Church source in Rome told The Sun.
“The most likely outcome is they will leave their religious service.”
In February, Pope Francis publicly acknowledged that nuns were being sexually abused by priests and bishops.
In the 1990s, as the child sex abuse crisis was starting to emerge in the U.S., leaders of women’s religious orders wrote several reports pointing to the abuse of nuns, many of whom came from Africa.
