Jodi Centonze is Catholic, as was Terri. More than likely, she will marry Schiavo in a Catholic Church.
Jodi found a local Catholic church, Esperito Santo in Safety Harbor, to baptize her illegitmate baby (she had their second child in Oct 2003, the week Terri was being starved). The priest who baptised the baby was aware that Jodi was not married to Schiavo and she had been involved in an adulterous affair with him for over 10 years. All the while, Michael was telling the world that he still loved Terri.
The St. Petersburg Times on Michael and Jodi's wedding
Schiavo weds in private service
The ceremony at a Catholic church was very emotional, a relative says. The couple's two children attend.
By CURTIS KRUEGER, Times Staff Writer
Published January 22, 2006
SAFETY HARBOR - Michael Schiavo and Jodi Centonze were married in a private ceremony at Espiritu Santo Catholic Church on Saturday.
"It was very emotional," said John Centonze, brother of the bride, just after the noon ceremony. "It's been a long time coming. A lot of things happened in between."
The wedding came a day after the couple applied for a Pinellas County marriage license and 10 months after the death of Schiavo's first wife, Terri.
Terri Schiavo died March 31, two weeks after her feeding tube was removed, and 15 years after a cardiac arrest that left her in what most doctors called a persistent vegetative state. Her death was a most public process, with the Florida Legislature, Congress, the courts, pundits and interest groups weighing in.
The wedding, in contrast, was private. Mindful of the media circus that had whirled about Terri Schiavo's hospice for weeks, along with throngs of protesters, the families kept the time and location of Saturday's ceremony a secret. Three St. Petersburg Times journalists arrived at the church, but were asked not to go in.
Schiavo wore a black tuxedo and Centonze wore a long, flowing, white wedding gown. Their two children attended. The bride and groom did not make any public comment.
"Except for the fact that the world knows their name, it was like any wedding you've ever been to," said Michael Hirsh, who attended, and who is helping Schiavo write a book titled Terri: The Truth.
Hirsh estimated about 80 people attended. The priest offered no homily. Afterward the wedding party went to a reception at East Lake Country Club.
"It was just a beautiful ceremony," Hirsh said. "Everyone there was just extremely happy for them."
Hirsh said, "There weren't a lot of dry eyes in the place."
Centonze agreed. "I had a couple tears," he said.
Schiavo and Jodi Centonze met in a dentist's office and began dating a few years later. Terri Schiavo already had suffered her accident, and already was living in a nursing home.
Schiavo referred to Jodi Centonze as his fiancee for more than five years, as the Terri Schiavo case worked its way through the court system, and the halls of the Florida Legislature and Congress.
Some of Schiavo's friends compared him during this time to a man whose wife had Alzheimer's disease; he still loved his wife but also wanted companionship. But in the superheated rhetoric of Terri Schiavo's last months, critics called him an adulterer because he had taken up with another woman while still married.
In 1990, cardiac arrest deprived Terri Schiavo of oxygen for five minutes. Doctors eventually diagnosed her as being in a persistent vegetative state, meaning she was not conscious of her surroundings.
However, Terri Schiavo's family sharply disagreed and consulted doctors who disputed or doubted the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state. They hoped to keep her alive and give her extensive therapy.
An autopsy concluded that Terri Schiavo never would have recovered from the brain damage she suffered during her 1990 collapse. Doctors have never competely understood what brought on her initial cardiac arrest.
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/01/22/Tampabay/Schiavo_weds_in_priva.shtml
From what I understand, there are Catholic priests who will baptize a child born out of wedlock, but in this case I hope she got a stern lecture along with the rites.
If I get around to it, I'll ask my aunt about the situation.
Perhaps the pastor of the church, what is it, Espiritu Sancto, spoke broken English, since that is obviously a church catering to Hispanics in the area. Maybe he didn't understand her very well, when she told him that the children were illegitimate. (You think she even talked with him about it? Yeah, right!)