Italians debate legal status of gay, unwed couples

ROME, Dec 7 (Reuters) A city in northern Italy's Catholic heartland became the first in the country to allow unmarried heterosexuals and homosexuals to register formally as couples, provoking the wrath of the Vatican and the political right.

The city council of Padua in the Veneto region, which has a centre-left majority, voted 26-7 in favour of allowing such couples to register as ''families based on ties of affection''.

While the move is far from allowing legally binding marriage contracts, it was seen by some as a step forward for gay and unwed heterosexual couples to get rights in Catholic Italy.

In a strongly worded editorial, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemned the move as an ''incredible'' attempt to allow what it called ''a parallel family'' and branded its political backers as ''hypocrites''.

Franco Grillini, a gay national parliamentarian, condemned the Vatican editorial.

''The Vatican has to get it into its head that what constitutes a family is decided by the members of that family and not by the Vatican,'' Grillini told Reuters.

The move, approved late on Monday, would allow the couples to receive a ''certification of family'' document from Padua city hall establishing the date a family was started.

Such certificates are needed in Italy to join waiting lists for public housing, to obtain permission from employers to stay away from work to assist a sick family member at home or in hospital, and for various minor legal proceedings.

''This is the most we could have done right now,'' Alessandro Zan, a gay member of the Padua city council who wrote the resolution, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

CATHOLIC HEARTLAND The decision was taken in one of the largest cities of the northern Veneto region, which is known as ''White Veneto'' because it is traditionally strongly Catholic and for decades voted for the now-defunct Christian Democratic party.

Padua is also famous as the burial place of St Anthony, one of the most venerated figures in Roman Catholicism.

The city council's decision was praised by centre-left politicians and gay groups but condemned by the centre-right.

''This is unconstitutional because it equates the (traditional) family founded on marriage with a phantom family based on affective ties,'' said Riccardo Pedrizzi, head of the right-wing National Alliance party. ''This is very worrying''.

Another centre-right member of parliament, Giustina Mistrello, called it ''truly shameful'', but Socialist politician Luca Liguoro said it was ''courageous'' and exemplary.

The centre-left government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi has promised some form of recognition for unmarried couples but has so far stopped short of openly supporting gay marriage.

But some leftist parties in the national coalition, which ranges from Catholics to communists, back greater rights for homosexuals, including marriage.

Many in the centre left support legal recognition of unwed heterosexual and homosexual couples similar to that in France, which has granted all couples the right to form civil unions, and to joint social security and other benefits.

Pope Benedict and Italy's powerful Catholic Church oppose such legal moves, saying that the introduction of laws on other forms of union would only destabilise the traditional family.

REUTERS PB BS1011