VATICAN CITY — The Vatican’s trial over leaked documents has taken a complicated but expected turn with the birth of a baby named Pietro.

Francesca Chaouqui, a public relations expert and member of a papal reform commission, gave birth Tuesday just as the trial in which she is a defendant resumed.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, announced the birth and sent his best wishes for the arrival of the 3.7-kilo baby.

“The beautiful news is that this morning, the expected baby of Ms. Chaouqui was born,” Lombardi’s note said.

“His name is Peter Elijah Anthony, and he weighs 8.2 pounds,” he wrote. “Welcome! Best wishes to him and to his parents.”

The Vatican accuses Chaouqui, a Vatican monsignor, and his assistant of leaking confidential documents exposing Vatican greed and mismanagement to two journalists. The journalists are also on trial, accused of breaking Vatican law by publishing the information.

They face up to eight years in prison; Chaouqui says she would refuse any papal pardon if convicted, and raise Pietro behind bars.

In a January 2016 interview with Crux, Chaouqui said she would name her son “Peter” in honor of the pope, and also broke into tears describing how one day she would have to explain to her son why he was baptized in prison.

Chaouqui steadfastly maintains her innocence, and has insisted that she will not accept a pardon or suspended sentence even it’s offered.

“If you’re going to take someone and destroy their public image, the Vatican must have the dignity to enforce its penalties,” she told Crux. “If I have to put up with this suffering … and then they just call me ‘guilty but pardoned,’ or ‘guilty with a suspended sentence,’ I won’t accept it.”

Journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldo wrote blockbuster books in November detailing the enormous apartments enjoyed by Vatican cardinals, the high prices required to get a saint approved and the millions in missing inventory from the Vatican’s tax-free stores.

Monsignor Lucio Vallejo Balda, the No. 2 in the Vatican reform commission, has admitted he provided Nuzzi with access to the password-protected documents. But he denied that he was threatened or pressured by Nuzzi to do so.

Nuzzi took the stand on Tuesday to deny that Chaouqui had passed him any documentation, saying she merely introduced him to Vallejo.

Vallejo, for his part, is now enjoying a bit more of Rome’s lovely spring weather. He had been taken into Vatican custody immediately after his November arrest but was subsequently granted house arrest. He was put back in a Vatican cell earlier this year after he was caught with a cell-phone smuggled to him in a donut.

Lombardi announced that as of Saturday, Vallejo was “no longer in a state of detention but of semi-freedom.”

(Crux Staff also contributed to this report.)