Los Angeles (E! Online) – If Madonna gets a judicial OK, her sonDavid will be getting a little sister.
A Malawi court has scheduled a hearing for Monday to take up the Material Mama's petition to add an orphaned girl to the brood.
The hearing was announceda day after officials in theAfrican nation confirmed the 50-year-old entertainer was seeking asecond adoption.
Also on Friday, the identity of the 4-year-old girl was confirmed.
"Her name is Mercy James from Mchinji Home of Hope orphanage. She has no father and mother—they both died. We finished the assessment yesterday in readiness for the courts next week," a spokesman forthe Ministry of Gender and Child Development told Reuters.
If all goes according to plan, Mercy will join 12-year-old Lourdes (Madonna's daughter with former flame Carlos Leon), 9-year-oldRocco (her biological son with Guy Ritchie) and 3-year-old David Banda, whom she and her filmmaker ex-hubby adopted two-and-a-half years ago after traveling to Malawi to help build an orphanage there.
Mercy hails from the same orphanage.
The "Causing a Commotion" singer is expected to arrive in Malawi with David sometime over the weekend and will reportedly take the boy to meet his biological father, Yohane Banda, while they're visiting.
Her publicist has declined to comment on the latest adoption news, but Madonna is hopingto avoid the controversy that eruptedlast time around, when various child advocacy groups accused her of using her superstar status to evade the nation's adoption laws.
Now a newly minted single mom with an extremely busy touring schedule, the "Sticky and Sweet" purveyor will be required to justify her filing before the court.
In an interview with Malawi's Nation newspaper earlier this month, Madonna was quoted as saying she'd only go through with it if she had the "support of the Malawian people and government."
(Originaly published March 27, 2009, at 11:05 a.m. PT)
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