The Priest & The Girl

"She was a wonderful kid," said Claire Young's father last week. With just a trace of his native brogue, Professor James Young of Chicago's Loyola University told how he used to take his only child to summer concerts in Grant Park. "She used to be happiest when she was listening to classical records and singing with them," he said. "She had girl friends, but wouldn't go out with boys. We would encourage her to go to dances, but she never wanted to."

Her singing teacher, 80-year-old Madame Antoinette Lebrun, remembered her as "so ladylike, so refined." But Mme. Lebrun thought she seemed to be restless under her mother's firm hand.

A Punch in the Nose. It was at Mme. Lebrun's in 1949 that Claire, a lanky, plain girl of 18, met Father Luciano Negrini, an English-speaking Italian priest, 41 years old. A veteran of 15 years as a missionary in China, Father Negrini had been sent by his bishop to the U.S. to win friends and funds for the mission in Hupeh. He won so close a friend in Claire that last September U.S. ecclesiastical authorities sent him back to Italy under charges of "bad conduct."

Last January Claire headed for Italy. On her own savings from jobs, she had left home without a word. For six months she and Negrini lived together in a shabby one-room apartment near Milan which he shares with two elderly aunts, a cousin and several cats. But Claire found Italy "beautiful and peaceful" -- until the American consulate demanded her passport to return her to the U.S. as a minor living abroad without her parents' consent. Claire refused, said she would renounce her American citizenship first, and got an Italian soggiorno (residence permit), which expired this week.

Last month Claire's mother turned up in Milan to get her daughter back. Mother, daughter and priest met in the office of Milan's deputy police commissioner.

Informed that she would have to go home, even though she had turned 21 in June, Claire became hysterical, punched a policeman in the nose, and landed in a cell of Milan's medieval San Vittore prison.

Carrying the Weight. Last week she was out again and back in Negrini's room with the aunts and the cats. She had a psychiatrist's bill of health and a new soggiorno. "Luciano and I will now get married as soon as possible," Claire exulted. But until the U.S. consulate issues her a statement that she is free to marry, Italian law forbids her to marry an Italian.

Under suspension "a divinis," which means he is barred from saying Mass or administering the sacraments, Father Negrini (like Claire) faces excommunication if they marry in a civil ceremony. Rome's excitable daily II Momenta quoted Negrini as saying: "I don't feel I can go on the rest of my life carrying the weight of the excommunication--be it for myself or for Claire. We have remained profoundly

Catholic, and the excommunication disturbs us and prevents us from being completely happy."

Back in Chicago, devout Professor Young, who goes to Mass daily, wound up his summer school teaching and settled back to wait for word from Italy. Said he quietly: "I have been feeling quite old in the last few weeks."

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