NFL Coach’s Vatican Marriage

Posted by Tom McFeely

Friday, January 30, 2009 12:20 PM

Steve Spagnuolo (stlrams.com)

Steve Spagnuolo, the new head coach of the St. Louis Rams, has a strong Catholic faith.

As does his wife Maria. So when the couple decided to marry four years ago, they planned to celebrate their wedding Mass at a church in Rome.

Only problem was, the paper work got tangled up at the last moment, seemingly preventing them from realizing their dream.

But that’s when the hand of God intervened, Spagnuolo says in this article published last week by the Belleville, Ill. News-Democrat:

“You try to get married in another country, you talk about paperwork,” Spagnuolo said. “This paperwork around here is nothing.”
Despite months of planning, a big hitch developed just a few days before Spagnuolo was supposed to leave the United States.
A paper had to be filed at an office in Rome that was going to be closed on Friday. Spagnuolo wasn’t arriving in Rome until Thursday night.
“I had read somewhere that if you got married at the Vatican, you didn’t need this piece of paper because the Vatican has its own rules because it’s its own country,” Spagnuolo said.
So Spagnuolo hatched a plan to get married at the Vatican instead.
“This is my simple mind,” Spagnuolo said. “Have you ever been to St. Peter’s Basilica? There are eight chapels. Four on this side and four on that side. I knew that because I read it somewhere. I was like, ‘How hard can it be? You just go in one of those chapels.”’
Spagnuolo contacted a priest who used to say Mass for the Philadelphia Eagles that was now stationed in Rome.
“I come to find that they only do one wedding at 10:30 (a.m.) and one at 4 (p.m.),” Spagnuolo said.
Surprisingly, one of those time slots was open due to a last-minute cancellation.
So, after plunking down $100 for a best man — a 24-year-old seminary student — and a maid of honor, Spagnuolo and Maria got married at the Vatican.
“That was an act of God or divine intervention,” Spagnuolo said.
That’s not the end of the story.
“This is where you know God is in everything,” Spagnuolo said. “My wife and I go to Newport, Rhode Island, for the first time this past summer. We turn the news on in the hotel room, and my best man is being ordained on TV in Rhode Island. I’m like, ‘There’s Jeremy. That’s him.”’

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