In a twist that seems at odds with the Vatican’s own emphasis on family values, two employees of the Vatican bank found themselves jobless for doing something the Catholic Church normally celebrates: getting married.
Domenico Fabiani and Silvia Carlucci were fired on October 1, 2024, just one month after exchanging their wedding vows, due to a newly implemented Vatican bank regulation that explicitly forbids workplace marriages. The Institute for Religious Works (IOR), as the bank is formally known, had introduced the policy on May 2, 2024 — less than four months before the couple’s planned August 31 ceremony — mandating that if two employees marry, one must resign within 30 days or both face termination.
“The institute knew perfectly well that deciding two months before our wedding which one of us should be fired was both inhumane and economically devastating,” Carlucci told reporters after their dismissal. The couple’s situation was particularly precarious — both support children from previous annulled marriages and had recently taken on a mortgage.
A Policy Out of Nowhere?
The Vatican bank insists the regulation wasn’t specifically targeting Fabiani and Carlucci. According to bank representatives, the policy had been under development for some time and was only implemented after the last previously married employee couple had retired from the institution.
IOR lawyer Roberto Lipari argued that “multiple moments” existed where a different resolution could have been reached, suggesting the bank had attempted to accommodate the couple. But the couple tells a different story.
“Their mistake, according to the IOR, was talking to their own relatives about a policy that directly impacted their wedding and their livelihoods,” a statement supporting the couple noted, suggesting that simply discussing the policy with family members may have factored into their dismissal.
Why didn’t they just postpone the wedding? The couple explained that quitting one job was financially impossible given their obligations to children, former spouses, and their new mortgage. The bank’s suggestion that one simply resign wasn’t viable for a family already stretching to meet multiple financial commitments.
Victory Through Legal Action
In January 2025, Fabiani and Carlucci took the extraordinary step of filing a wrongful termination lawsuit against their Vatican employer — a rare move in an institution where employment disputes typically remain internal affairs.
The gamble paid off. In what many observers view as a surprising development, the couple was reinstated through a negotiated settlement announced by the Vatican lay employees union, which characterized the resolution as “a victory of common sense.” The exact details regarding when they would resume working and what their roles would be remain undisclosed.
That said, the union considers the victory incomplete. Vatican procedures don’t reimburse legal fees for the winning party, leaving the couple to shoulder significant costs despite prevailing in their case. The union also highlighted that “the emblematic case of Silvia and Domenico suggests that the application of labor law needs more solid foundations,” noting that such a dismissal rule would likely be deemed unconstitutional under Italian law.
Papal Intervention?
While fighting their termination, the couple had hoped for intervention from the late Pope Francis, given his well-known emphasis on family values and support for working families. “The couple has not commented publicly on the settlement, but they told The Associated Press when they filed the lawsuit that they had hoped for an intervention by the late Pope Francis, who was pontiff at the time, given his emphasis on family values,” the AP reported.
The bank suggested one of them quit, but “the couple said they could not afford to due to financial obligations to their children, former spouses and a new mortgage.” Their reinstatement suggests that even within the Vatican’s unique employment system, there are limits to how far an employer can go in regulating the personal lives of its staff.
For Fabiani and Carlucci, the ordeal reveals an ironic contradiction: employed by the financial arm of an institution that celebrates matrimony as a sacrament, they found themselves punished precisely for entering into that sacred bond. Their case may well establish an important precedent for other Vatican employees facing similar conflicts between institutional regulations and personal life choices.
