ITALY
Daily Mail (UK)
By SARA MALM and GIANLUCA MEZZOFIORE FOR MAILONLINE
A former nun has claimed that she was forced to engage in daily self-flagellation and encouraged to write her vows in her own blood while living in a convent in southern Italy.
The woman, now in her 30s, alleges that nuns of Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate, which has its headquarters in Frigento, Avellino province in Campania, took part in the rituals in the 1990s.
In addition to the punishing rituals, she says she was fed out-of-date yoghurt and corned beef, which the nuns were told would not affect them if they ate it ‘with true obedience’.
In an interview with an Italian newspaper where she makes the damaging allegations, the former nun shows off a post card with her vows, signed by the head of the order.
She claims the vows were written using in her own blood, on the day of her initiation in 1996, when she was 17 years old.
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