Religion: The Rota

Film Producer Carlo Ponti and Actor Vittorio Gassman are waiting this week—and probably will be for many more—to hear whom they are married to, if anyone. So is a British petty officer named William, whose German wife Olga claimed she had taken a vow of chastity and refused to have sexual intercourse with him, but nevertheless presented him with a child. So is Nick, a Manhattan Sicilian, who claims the Mafia frightened him into marrying 14-year-old Tonina. Their marital fates—and those of many other Roman Catholics throughout the world—are being decided by Rome's Sacred Rota, one of...