Nun who gave birth in Italy was unaware she was pregnant.

[bravenak]

A nun who gave birth to a baby boy in the central Italian city of Rieti, said she had no idea she was pregnant, local media report.

The 31-year-old was rushed to hospital with abdominal pains, which she thought were stomach cramps.

The young mother, who is originally from El Salvador, reportedly named her newborn Francis after the current Pope.

The mayor of Rieti, Simone Petrangeli has appealed to the public and media to respect the woman's privacy.

The news has drawn international attention to the small city of 47,700 inhabitants.

The nun called the ambulance on Wednesday morning. A few hours later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

"I did not know I was pregnant. I only felt a stomach pain," she was quoted as saying by the Ansa news agency.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25787757

Mother and baby are doing well, she will be caring for the child herself. I think the other nuns will enjoy having a baby around, and they seem to be accepting of her and don't really seem to find it to be a scandal.
I don't know why, but the idea of a nun having a baby made me smile.

[JI7]

1. who is the father ?

[Niceguy1]

2. maybe father-father

[bravenak]

3. Has to be Jesus.

She's his wife, it's his baby.

[KitSileya]

4. I wish they would include her status in the convent, as it were.

Is she a novice? In her first vows? That has a bearing to how long she's been at the convent (and she's a sister, not a nun - there's a difference.) If she's a novice, she may have been there as little as 6 months, which would put conception before her entrance, and suddenly the story isn't quite as salacious, no?

[Shrike47]

5. Holy Ghost strikes again!

Actually, if this woman is sincere, the whole thing is pathetic. Yes, I have encountered women so naive/uninformed that they didn't understand what happened to them.

[bravenak]

20. That's not quite fair. She never claimed to be a virgin or not sexually active.

I think she knows how she got pregnant, she just didn't know conception had occurred after intercourse. Having never been pregnant before she may not have known the signs, and some women continue to spot throughout their pregnancies indicating that they are menstruating causing them to believe they are not with child. I didn't know I was pregnant for four months with my last child because I was bleeding every month like clockwork and had had a terrible case of swine flu, got pneumonia, and was on several antibiotics for weeks. I lost 20 pounds in a month and my body was so weak and jacked up from the flu, my doctor had to tell me I was pregnant. I was not naive or uninformed, I was just very sick.

[jakeXT]

6. One in 200 US women claim to have given birth without ever having had sexual intercourse. ;-)

The results of a study on reproductive health, published in the British Medical Journal, revealed that one in 200 US women claim to have given birth without ever having had sexual intercourse.

The BMJ reports that of the women who took part in the study, 45 (0.5%) reported at least one virgin pregnancy, "unrelated to the use of assisted reproductive technology".

They claim to have conceived without vaginal intercourse or in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).

The BMJ article notes that virgin births, or parthenogenesis (from the Greek parthenos for virgin and genesis for birth), can occur in non-humans as a consequence of "asexual reproduction, where growth and development of the embryo occurs without fertilisation".

However, the authors of the study, entitled "Like a virgin (mother)", warn that researchers need to take into account the possibility of fallible memory on the part of respondents.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/shocked-italian-nun-gives-birth-baby-boy-095247545.html

[ananda]

7. Also, aren't there rape drugs that remove memory?

..

[jakeXT]

8. Or just altar wine

WARSAW, Poland — A Benedictine nun is facing jail for driving a tractor into a car while drunk outside her convent in southwestern Poland, police said Friday.

The 45-year-old nun will be charged with drunk-driving and causing an accident, which carries a prison sentence of up to two years, Dariusz Waluch, police spokesman in the southwestern Polish town of Dzierzoniow, told the local news agency PAP.

He said the nun was 17 times over the country’s legal alcohol limit for driving

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4515153/

[temporary311]

12. That might account for some of them

but the article just states "vaginal intercourse," which isn't a necessity for getting knocked up. Just some foreplay or general fooling around that results in ejaculation on or near the vagina can do the trick.

[WinkyDink]

9. There's a joke about a heterosexual priest in there somewhere.

[KitSileya]

10. And then it turns out she got pregnant prior to entering the convent.

Apparently the father is a man from her native country, and she entered the convent this summer.

However will we bear the deprivation - not to be able to make tons of jokes about priests and nuns!

[bravenak]

14. I just thought it was sweet that the nun had her baby and the other nuns are cool with it.

They don't think its a scandal, nuns have been getting pregnant for centuries. I'm not religious and I am not interested in shaming a person for so called sin, I don't believe in all of those silly rules about sex and procreation before marriage.
If the whole order of nuns decides tomorrow to collectively get IVF I would say, "cool, it's nice having kids around, congratulations!" I love babies, they smell so good, and when you hold them close, you feel so connected to life, it's indescribable how much joy having a child can bring. I see no good reason that nuns, priests or other clergy should have to give that up. Sharing the gift of life with another human is a good thing, I could care less that she was not supposed to have sex.

Not trying to make fun of the woman, just sharing her joy with you.

[KitSileya]

15. I didn't think you were scandal-mongering,

And I apologize if I gave that impression. It just gets old really fast whenever anti- religious people point out every time someone religious breaks their religious code, just to gloat.

[bravenak]

19. It does get old to pick on the religious for being human, sorry if that's been happening to you.

Nuns and Priests are human and have desires, it's natural to want to be intimate with someone, that shouldn't mean that they should be shunned by the church and society for giving in to natural instinct. As long as they take responsibility for the children they create we should see it as a good thing and be supportive of them just like we would for anyone who was not of the church. Nobody was harmed and everybody is healthy and happy.

[panader0]

11. I haven't been to Italy in many years.....

[Holly_Hobby]

13. My husband's grandmother was a nun

She was fooling around with the church's janitor. They married, had 6 kids, he lived on the streets as an alcoholic.

[Initech]

16. Immaculate conception?

[Zorra]

17. Congratulations to mom, hope little Francis has a wonderful family to grow up in!

Lots of aunts to babysit him, looks like.

[lindysalsagal]

18. Teacher: "Good, Billy. Now, Frances, what does YOUR mother do for a living?"

Medieval nunneries were originally orphanages and hospitals, so, monks and nuns were always raising little kids. But it is kinda funny.