An Italian woman evaded arrest for two years by posing as a nun and hiding out in convents in northern Italy, police said this week.

In a story reminiscent of the 1990s British comedy Nuns on the Run, the 47-year-old was convicted of fraud by a court in Sicily in late 2017 and sentenced in absentia to two years in prison. An arrest warrant was issued, but the woman fled the island, covered her tracks and made her way to the other end of Italy, where she found refuge by pretending to be a nun in search of hospitality in the northern regions of Piedmont and Lombardy.

According to investigators who questioned some of the duped nuns, the woman phoned the convents pretending to be a “sister looking for help and claiming she was severely ill”.

Italian police said the woman, who is from Acqui Terme in Piedmont and has not been named, repeatedly changed her identity as she moved from convent to convent. The nuns at one convent who hosted the fugitive for a few days said she presented herself as the niece of one of their sisters. Others said she simply described herself as a nun and did not embellish her story further. One convent said she had even pretended to be a mother superior – the head of a female religious community.

Most of the nuns spoken to by authorities described her as a very kind woman who had gained the trust of the other sisters.

However, last week her luck ran out when a nun from a Benedictine convent in Gallarate in Lombardy’s Varese province grew suspicious about her identity and phoned the police. According to the nun, the woman’s stories “were full of contradictions” and on several occasions she changed her version of events.

The police immediately went to the convent, where they asked the woman questions about her background. Investigators said she was very cooperative but seemed confused about basic biographical details. They established that she was in possession of a stolen ID card and took her to a police station, where they identified her as the person sentenced in Sicily and arrested her.

Now, in addition to the previous conviction, the woman faces fresh charges of claiming false identity. Authorities have not said when she was originally sentenced.

About 80% of Italians identify as Catholics and the country has a rich history of criminals using religious disguises to evade justice.

In 2013, a 61-year-old Calabrian drug dealer wore a priest’s cassock while importing cocaine from France in a car. For years, the boss of the Sicilian Mafia, Totò Riina, dressed as a priest to attend meetings with other members of the organisation in Calabria. According to the Sicilian mafia boss Giusy Vitale, another boss, Bernardo Provenzano, sporadically dressed as a bishop during his 43 years on the run. Provenzano was finally arrested in 2006.



