Church claims of victory ring false in Italian vote.

A REFERENDUM ON CHANGing Italy's assisted fertility laws failed to reach the required 50 percent plus one mark, negating the result. In fact, nearly three-quarters of the country's eligible electors did not vote.

The referendum asked voters to consider four issues: embryo research, the number of embryos that can be transplanted into the uterus, whether embryos have rights and gamete donation.

While the Catholic hierarchy, including the pope, had campaigned hard in support of abstention, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, head of the Italian bishops' conference, rejected the claims of some that the result was a victory, pointing out that a victory would have entailed a 'No' vote--something the Italian bishops clearly did not feel confident they could achieve. Some 85 percent of those who did vote answered 'Yes' to changes in the law.

No referendum in Italy during the past 10 years has achieved the required voter turnout of 50 percent, and the majority of those who did not vote in this referendum abstained because of apathy, not because of what the church hierarchy instructed them to do.

Dominic Standish, who wrote an article on the referendum campaign in the Spring 2005 issue of Conscience, suggested that the result spells real problems for the bishops. He wrote in the webzine, spiked-online.com, "Over the past 20 years, there has been a huge decline in church attendance and a growing disregard for

Catholicism on questions including contraception and premarital sex. Nobody can seriously argue that the church now has greater influence in Italy than it did in 1974 and 1981, when it lost in referenda allowing divorce and abortion."