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Two nuns have been found to be pregnant after returning from missionary work in Africa.

A major investigation is now underway after the two pregnancies, which are not thought to be related, were discovered.

One of the nuns, reportedly based at a convent in Sicily's Nebrodi mountains, didn’t realise she was pregnant until she consulted a doctor about a stomach pain.

The nun, who is aged 34, has been moved to Palermo where she is expected to give birth to the child.

In the second case the mother superior of an institute for the elderly at Ragusa – also in Sicily – was discovered to be several weeks pregnant after visiting her home country of Madagascar.

(Image: Getty Images)

“There is consternation at this news,' a Vatican source told The Sun.

“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.”

The Catholic Church has been quietly undergoing its own #MeToo movement over the past couple of years, with more and more nuns coming forward complaining of systematic sexual abuse.

As long ago as 2013, Fr Anthony Musaala, a catholic priest from Uganda, wrote an open letter in which he alleged "numerous cases" priests indulging in what called “sexual liaisons” with nuns.

For that, he was suspended from the church until he agreed to issue an apology.

A group of nuns in Chile told of their abuse by priests and other nuns in a 2018 TV documentary, saying their superiors knew about it but did nothing to stop it.

(Image: Getty Images)

One church insider told AP "Consecrated women have to be encouraged to speak up when they are molested.

"Bishops have to be encouraged to take them seriously, and make sure the priests are punished if guilty.”

In March this year, Lucetta Scaraffia, former editor of Catholic journal Women Church World exposed the endemic sexual abuse of nuns and said that many priests had paid for secret abortions to hide the evidence.

And also this year Pope Francis publicly admitted that many nuns had been sexually abused, describing it as a 'serious, grave problem'.

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One nun from the Monastery of Las Rosalinas in Spain reported that she was pregnant in 2018, but claimed she was a virgin and that the Holy Spirit was responsible: “I don’t want to offend anybody, but it had to be the Holy Spirit, there is no other explanation because I’ve never had sex with a man," claimed the 29-year-old.

“The Holy Spirit visited me in my dreams and fertilised me. I am not saying that I am the new Virgin Mary, that would be a sin of vanity.”