Undoing the Gordian Knot

"For whoever divorces in Italy," says Mario Guttieres, a prominent Rome matrimonial lawyer, "love has been over for a long time." Take the case of Angiola Gattoronchieri. Married in 1907, she and her two sons were left behind eight years later when her husband took off for Argentina, never to be heard from again. She spent 56 years as one of Italy's "white widows"--women whose husbands have emigrated and left them behind, still legally and indissolubly married. Last week Signora Gattoronchieri, now 103 years old, became the oldest person to obtain a decree since divorce became legal in Italy last December.

Despite the fears of the law's opponents, the expected avalanche of divorce petitions has not materialized. Costs are high (anywhere from $350 to $1,000), grounds for divorce are limited, and court procedures ponderous. Some judges have been accused of deliberately stalling cases, and some parish priests have been taking unconscionably long in furnishing documents to would-be divorcees, making it impossible for them to untie the knot. Aside from a few celebrities such as Vittorio De Sica, Maria Callas and Catherine Spaak, those who do go through the struggle in the courts are usually middle-class people anxious to legalize long-term liaisons and second families. "Divorce is neither easy nor a bourgeois luxury," says a lawyer. Judge Marcello Tondo reports that some litigants have appeared in court in wheelchairs and on stretchers, sometimes with an attendant cardiologist. A number of them, he says, have been separated so many years they no longer recognize their abandoned mates when they meet in court.

For all that, the battle over the law is far from over. Last week the divorzisti won an important legal test when Italy's Constitutional Court upheld the law. The specific issue, raised in an appeal by a Siena tribunal, was whether church marriages can be dissolved by a civil court. The court held that they could. This left popular referendum as the only recourse left for Italy's vocal anti-divorzisti to quash the divorce law. They had already anticipated that move the week before in submitting 1,370,134 signatures--nearly three times the number required--petitioning for a referendum to abrogate the law.

Though the Vatican officially kept hands off the highly successful referendum campaign, Rome's conservative II Messaggero charged the Vatican with interference nonetheless. Said La Stampa's Carlo Casalegno: "The anti-divorzisti were able to lean on the church structure, hundreds of dioceses, thousands of religious institutions, and tens of thousands of parishes from Bolzano to Siracusa, in organizing the collection of signatures." Thus, when the referendum takes place, probably next spring, it may emerge as a test of the political power of the church. Right now the church enjoys a slight advantage; a recent poll showed 49.3% against the divorce law, 42.2% for it. Caught in the middle for another agonizing year, meanwhile, are thousands of people who are trying to right old wrongs, give illegitimate children a name, and reconstruct their lives and families.

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