Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui, 33, and Msgr Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, 54, were arrested by the Vatican Gendarmerie following an investigation.

Their arrests came days before the publication of two books about Vatican finances and associated scandals.

But while the priest was held in a Vatican prison, Dr Chaouqui was released after being detained for a day and a half, as she had reportedly begun to collaborate with the investigators.

Her detention was reportedly in a convent for women religious inside the Vatican, not in a jail cell, as other accounts reported.

America magazine has learned that her rapid release may be connected to the fact that she is two months pregnant.

America reported sources as saying that Pope Francis did not want Dr Chauoqui held in a prison because of her condition.

Dr Chaouqui reportedly asked Pope Francis to pray that she and her husband would have a child.

Msgr Vallejo Balda is in the same prison cell that was occupied by Benedict XVI's butler, Paolo Gabriele, 3 years ago.

After Dr Chaouqui's release, she has maintained her total innocence in conversations with journalists, and on Facebook and Twitter she stated: "I am not a mole. I have not betrayed the Pope. I never gave a page to anybody."

She blames Msgr Vallejo Balda for dragging her into all this.

Both were members of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organisation of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See (COSEA) set up by Pope Francis in July, 2013, but which is now defunct having completed its work.

The priest was secretary of that commission and she was one of its members.

Both had access to the confidential financial and organisational information that appears in the two books just published.

Since her release, Dr Chaouqui has been interrogated on at least one occasion by Vatican investigators.

A source close to Pope Francis told Italian newspaper La Stampa that "the Holy Father is saddened by the betrayal of the two disloyal collaborators".

On Sunday, Francis said the leaks were "deplorable act that does not help" and "a mistake", but added that he is continuing with reform.

Sources

• America
• The Times
• Vatican Insider
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Strettoweb

"For the archdiocese, this case has always been about an employee violating a legally enforceable contract that she signed," said communications director Dan Andriacco.

"Our schools are Catholic schools and the work that our school employees do is an extension of that ministry."

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Christa Dias is suing the archdiocese over her dismissal, saying she was fired simply because she was pregnant and unmarried.

Dias said she and her same-sex partner had discussed the possibility that being pregnant and unmarried could cause a problem with her employers. But they thought she could explain that the pregnancy was through artificial insemination and not premarital sex.

The archdiocese's human resources director, William Hancock, told the court he recommended Dias be fired after he was told she was pregnant out of wedlock and later that the pregnancy resulted from artificial insemination.

He said Dias was fired because she violated the contracts she signed "saying she would uphold the teachings of the Catholic Church", Hancock said. "She made a choice against the five contracts she signed."

He said his recommendation was "based on the conduct, not the pregnancy", and testified he would recommend firing a man who had got an unmarried woman pregnant or who had participated in artificial insemination.

The archdiocese also said Dias was a ministerial employee and the US Supreme Court had said religious groups can dismiss those employees without government interference.

But Dias says she taught computer technology at two schools and had no ministerial duties.

Dias said she is a Christian but not Catholic and was told that didn't matter when she was hired. She said she thought the contract clause requiring compliance with Church philosophies meant she should try "to be a Christian woman and follow the Bible".

At an earlier hearing, the judge noted that Dias "admitted she was in a long-term homosexual relationship during her employment, and that she kept such fact secret from defendants as she knew defendants would view her relationship as a violation of the morals clause".

Sources:

Washington Post

Courthouse News Service

Image: USA Today

Savita Halappanavar, a Hindu dentist originally from India, died of blood poisoning in Galway University Hospital. She was aged 31.

Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar, told news media that his wife had gone to the hospital with back pains on October 21 when she was 17 weeks pregnant. She was found to be miscarrying and was admitted. Because of her pain, she asked for an abortion but was refused.

"A doctor said it was the law — that this is a Catholic country. Savita said, ‘I am neither Irish nor Catholic' but they said there was nothing they could do," Mr Halappanavar said.

He said the doctor told the couple that the baby would not survive, but as long as there was a foetal heartbeat "there was nothing they could do".

After three days the baby died and its remains were surgically removed. Within hours the mother was placed under sedation in intensive care with blood poisoning. She was pronounced dead on October 28.

Speaking in the Irish parliament, Health Minister James Reilly said he had no evidence to suggest a Catholic ethos at the hospital prevented the pregnant woman's life from being saved by a medical termination.

The government, which has been considering changes to the law banning abortion, has said two internal investigations are being held into Mrs Halappanavar's death.

The government has been under pressure to change the law after the European Court of Human Rights two years ago ruled that Ireland was violating European Union law by not allowing abortions for life-threatening pregnancies.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation identifies Ireland as an unusually safe place to be pregnant. Its most recent report on global maternal death rates found that only three out of every 100,000 women die in childbirth in Ireland, compared with an average of 14 in Europe and North America, 190 in Asia and 590 in Africa.

Sources:

The Independent

Associated Press

Image: The Independent

Amber-Leigh Erasmus, who is now 17, is due to give birth to her first child on Saturday, a result of having unprotected sex during New Year celebrations.

Amber-Leigh said she was brought up with the idea that you should wait until marriage before having sex. But the things she learned at school made sex seem like a perfectly normal thing to do, so she tried it.

In a sex education programme "I learned [at the age of 13] that sex was okay as long as you consented to it. I learned how to put on condoms, and we even got to 'taste test' the flavours of oral condoms."

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Image: NIU Women;s Resource Centre

New Zealand-born Shamus Husheer, founder of the company Cambridge Temperature Concepts, told the Wall Street Journal that six months' use of his DuoFertility monitor has the same success rate as a round of IVF, according to a peer-reviewed study his company has published.

"From a woman's perspective, IVF is pretty awful. With us, all they have to do is wear a patch," Husheer said.

The monitor system uses a small temperature sensor which a woman tapes under her arm and wears all night and preferably during the day.

The monitor is synchronized with a base station connected to a PC to record a woman's body basal temperature, which is lower before ovulation than after.

A small increase in temperature of about 0.78 degrees Fahrenheit takes place within 48 hours of ovulation and will remain elevated until a woman's next period.

Recording the body basal temperature has historically been difficult and depends on taking temperature with regularity upon waking each morning.

The monitor uses the data to identify the day of a woman's ovulation and to suggest the ideal three-day window to try to conceive. A woman can also use the base station to report other events such as the beginning of her menstrual cycle, interrupted sleep, or illness.

The DuoFertility website characterizes the product as a "personal fertility coach" and as an alternative to lengthy waits to see fertility experts.

The device has been licensed by the British National Health Service and is undergoing approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The NHS is considering using the system for its patients with unexplained fertility, who number 4,000 per year.

In the U.K. an IVF cycle costs $7,200, while the DuoFertility system costs about $800.

IVF has also faced ethical objections. The procedure often creates "leftover" human embryos whose lives are at risk. Catholic ethicists also object to IVF's separation of procreation from marital sex.

Sources

• EWTN
• Duo Fertility