Rome – A top Italian cardinal said Monday that common- law status might be applied to offer some legal protection to unmarried heterosexual couples – offering a rare exception to the Catholic Church’s condemnation of de facto unions.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini gave no indication the recognition would be extended to same-sex couples and said any protection should stop short of envisioning “something similar to a marriage.”
The comments by Ruini, president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference and the pope’s vicar for Rome, came amid a renewed debate over whether Italy should grant unmarried couples some form of legal recognition.
“For those unions that have the desire or the need to give legal protection to their mutual relations there exists first of all the route of common law, (which is) very wide and can be adapted to various situations,” Ruini said before Italian bishops.
However, any such protections should not “envisage something similar to marriage but rather remain in the domain of people’s rights and duties,” the cardinal said.
Ruini’s remarks represented a rare exception in a debate where the church position in Italy has been rock solid. Luigi Accattoli, the Vatican correspondent of Corriere della Sera, Italy’s top newspaper, called the remarks a “small opening on unions, not on gays.”
However, Monsignor Ronny Jenkins, who teaches canon law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., said Ruini’s approach “wouldn’t be shockingly new.” Church law already recognizes the “civil effects” of nonmarital unions in providing child care and other social benefits but distinguishes between those and “the religious character and validity” of sacramental marriage in church, Jenkins said.
Papal biographer Marco Politi said “the Italian episcopal hierarchy has clearly decided to act like a political player, bypassing the role of Catholic deputies in parliament.”
Ruini “has indicated what, in the church’s opinion, is the only way: that is to say, direct agreements between two people, recognized by common law, in some cases even protection through special norms, but without accepting any model for unions than that of marriage,” Politi added.
