NAPLES (Reuters) - One of Italy's most infamous mobsters has fathered a daughter more than two decades after being jailed for life without the right to conjugal visits.

The miracle of sorts is thanks to a legal battle that allowed Raffaele Cutolo, a former boss of the Naples-based Camorra crime organisation, the right to father a child through artificial insemination.

It was a first for Italy, where mob bosses are expected to serve "hard time" once they are brought to justice.

"I'll die in prison. My last wish is to give my wife a child," Cutolo told newspaper La Repubblica last year.

Cutolo married his wife, appropriately named "Immacolata" or "Immaculate" in prison in 1983, but the two never consummated the marriage, according to news reports.

On Tuesday, at a Naples hospital, she delivered a baby girl named Denise. Mother and daughter are healthy.

Cutolo is currently serving multiple life sentences for murder. He was married before and fathered a son, who died in a gangland shoot-out in the 1990s at the age of 25.

Immacolata, asked about her daughter's future, said Denise would lead a life far from the Camorra.

"I want her to never even hear that word pronounced, because it is synonymous with pain for everybody," she told La Repubblica.