Posted on 01/23/2006 7:12:44 AM PST by NYer
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.
Scott Peterson
Maybe ... interesting to speculate what might be said ...
Shameful and disgraceful that a priest would perform this ceremony. This should be an affront and embarrassment to Catholics everywhere. It is frankly obscene.
Coincidentally enough ... the wedding coincided with the Right to Life Sunday.
Astounding.
I wonder what kind of priest would do it. One who normally works in Vegas, perhaps?
Looks like the whore got what she wanted all along. Offed the pesky ole wife, got to wear white after sleeping with a married man and bearing him two children in the process of her affair with him AND got her a Catholic wedding.
May God have mercy on their souls.
"You mean sleeping with someone not your wife while you're still married isn't adultery anymore? How many other words have had their meaning changed while I wasn't paying attention?"
http://www.legal-explanations.com/definitions/adultery.htm
http://www.legal-explanations.com/definitions/treason.htm
Sleep with one eye open, Jodi.
Could have been the pastor of that parish. IIRC, the diocesan bishop in that area didn't give much of a hoot about Schiavo's starving his wife.
I think you're right, they didn't seem to care much at that parish.
Ah, Mr. Sensitivity. He takes a fiancee while his wife is still alive.
I wonder if he made the wedding ring from the one he gave Terri, which he had melted down to make a ring for himself. Don't you think most husbands would wait until their wives were deceased, before raiding her jewelry case? Hmmmm....
I don't think a priest can refuse to marry two people who are eligible to marry under church law, even if one of them is a widower only by murder.
I may be wrong.
They probably figured Fr. Pavone would be busy with other matters...
Just some observations:
"Centonze wore a long, flowing, white wedding gown."
HUH?? An adulterous beotch who had TWO children out-of-wedlock, wearing white???
"Their two children attended."
Schiavo family values.
"Michael Hirsh...who is helping Schiavo write a book titled Terri: The Truth."
That HINO mediawhore couldn't tell the truth if he tried.
"The priest offered no homily."
AND no explanation as to why he presided over this unholy alliance.
"Afterward the wedding party went to a reception at East Lake Country Club."
Yea, that's right -- party on you two !@#$%^&* (redacted due to fear of being banned!)
Rant off now
They deserve each other.
Michael Hirsh
Hirsh, 62, a retired Los Angeles television producer who has written three books about the military, will assist Michael in the writing process.
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