By Cristiano Corvino
BRACCIANO, Italy (Reuters) - A romantic Italian wedding for Hollywood couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes might be a "Mission: Impossible," according to local officials.
The priest with jurisdiction over the dreamy lakeside castle tipped as the chosen location for the wedding says his parish won’t marry Cruise, and the mayor says she can’t because the couple haven’t done the official paperwork.
The small Italian town of Bracciano has been swimming with picture-snapping paparazzi since Il Messaggero newspaper reported that Castello Odescalchi in the town was chosen by the couple for their wedding later this month.
But rules of the local bureaucracy and the Roman Catholic Church appear to be a lot tougher than any of the macho super-secret spies Cruise’s character regularly defeats in the "Mission: Impossible" movies.
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Mayor Patrizia Riccioni told Reuters she would like the wedding to take place, but that it was unlikely any celebration would be blessed with state recognition given that the couple have not provided the needed documents.
"I don’t think it will be legal," she said. "On an Italian level, there are papers and documents that we certainly don’t have (for a wedding)."
But Cruise and Holmes’ Los Angeles-based publicist dismissed the notion that the American couple’s nuptials depended on official sanctioning by Italian authorities.
"They are making all the proper and necessary arrangements for their marriage to be legal," publicist Arnold Robinson told Reuters.
Cruise and Holmes announced in October that they would marry on November 18 in Italy, with Giorgio Armani designing Holmes’ gown. Their first public appearance as a couple was in Italy, where they attended film awards in Rome in 2005.
Holmes’ parents are both Roman Catholics, and one Italian newspaper wrote that the twice-divorced Cruise, a devout Scientologist, wanted to have a legally binding Catholic ceremony in Bracciano’s imposing castle.
An electrician in Bracciano fed the media-frenzy on Thursday, when he told Italian television that the princess whose family owns Castello Odescalchi had ordered him to rewire part of the castle ahead of the Cruise-Holmes ceremony.
The priest with responsibility for Bracciano has said that whatever ceremony Cruise and Holmes have, it cannot be Catholic because Cruise is divorced and does not have parish permission.
"Cruise is divorced," Monsignor Nicola Fiorentini told Italian media. "Even if the actor were not divorced, another fundamental requirement to validate the rite would be missing: the authorisation of the parish."
Wedding-watchers have also cautioned that if the couple go ahead with a Scientology ceremony alone, the Italian state is not likely to recognise it. The Church of Scientology was formed by the late American science-fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard.
The red tape and the naysayers haven’t quelled the excitement around the 15th century Castello Odescalchi, which has hosted a pope and kings.
"It’s a wonderful thing because it will bring back to life this dead countryside," local pensioner Maria Rosati said.
(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman)
