Madonna's new daughter Mercy leaves Malawi on flight to UK

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 20:00

MADONNA'S new daughter has been flown to London, an airport employee and a source familiar with the pop star's adoption proceedings in Malawi said last night.

The airport worker said three-year-old Chifundo "Mercy" James flew out late on Friday on a private jet, heading for London, with a stop in neighbouring South Africa.

The adoption source said the little girl was due to arrive in London yesterday morning after Malawi's highest court granted the adoption on 12 June. Mercy, the second child Madonna has adopted from Malawi, was reportedly accompanied by a nanny, a child nurse and a third aide.

The adoption decision on 12 June overturned a lower court ruling in April that Madonna had not spent enough time in Malawi to be given a child.

The high court said the first judge had imposed too narrow a definition of residency, and praised Madonna for her work with children in a poor country where half a million have lost a parent to Aids.

Madonna's Raising Malawi charity helps feed, educate and provide medical care for some of Malawi's orphans.

She adopted a son, David, from Malawi last year and has two other children, Lourdes, 12, and Rocco, eight.

Children's welfare groups had expressed concern that rules meant to protect children were being bent because of Madonna's celebrity, and perhaps out of gratitude for what she has done for Malawi.

Madonna met Mercy in 2006 at Kondanani Children's Village, an orphanage in Bvumbwe. It was the same year she began the process of adopting David, whom she found at another orphanage in central Malawi.

The girl's 18-year-old mother was unmarried and died soon after she gave birth. Since Madonna moved to adopt Mercy, a dispute has arisen between the girl's maternal relatives, who agreed to the adoption, and a man who says he is the child's father and wants to care for her himself, but has never seen her.