Winnipeg marriage gets the Pope's OK

HERE'S something to warm your wind-chilled, cold, cold hearts.A September-December wedding.

In January.

The betrothed are Naomi Levine, 56, of CBC Radio's Levine's Law fame, and former Investors Group chairman Arthur Mauro, who will be 76 next month.

The two lawyers are to be wed Saturday at St. Paul's High School Chapel by Monseigneur Norman Chartrand.

For the record it's Arthur's second marriage and Naomi's third.

Or is it her second?

Maybe we should back up a bit here.

Arthur, who's a Roman Catholic, has been a widower since his wife Nancie died three years ago. Naomi, who's Jewish, has been a widow since her second husband, the highly respected provincial court Judge Ian Dubienski died five years ago.

So it was that Tuesday night at CanWest Global's silver anniversary gala, Naomi and Art created a minor buzz amid the fabulous fuss of Izzy Asper's "strictly Winnipeg" dinner for 325.

Amid the congratulations was a recurring question.

"I keep getting people saying, 'You're converting to Catholicism,'" Naomi recalled yesterday. "Anybody who knows me knows that isn't going to happen. Nor does Arthur want me to."

But, there was this one itsy-bitsy issue that did require the attention of a certain priest.

"We had to get permission from the Pope to get married," Naomi said.

The Pope himself?

"Yeah," she said. "Something called the Petrine Privilege."

The Pope had to intercede, Naomi explained, because although she's a widow, she had been married once before.

"So for Arthur to be able to marry what amounts to a divorced, Jewish person, I had to petition the Pope. And it's the privilege of the Pope to dissolve my first marriage."

Having settled that question, there was just one major one left.

How many people to invite?

Answer: 65.

"It sort of got away on us," Naomi said.

Among those who made the final cut, former Manitoba premiers Gary Filmon and Duff Roblin and their respective spouses, Janice and Mary; University of Manitoba president Emoke Szathmary and husband George Riley, Red River College president Jacqie Thachuk, Justice Deborah McCawley and husband Otto Lang, Jim Carr, CEO of Business Council of Manitoba, and Justice Colleen Suche, lawyer Harold Buchwald and wife Dee, Justice Wilf DeGraves and wife Diane, former Manitoba curling champ and ski hill owner Hersh Lerner, concert producer Marv Terhoch and wife Sherrin, Marshall and Elba Haid, lawyer Michael Mercury and wife Maria, Father Sam from Holy Rosary Church and Father Mike from St. John Brebeuf Church.

Senator Douglas Everett and wife Patty are playing hosts to a reception for the bride and groom.

Oh, yes, and then there are special guests, Lou and Sophie Levine, who -- like the groom -- are old enough to be the bride's parents.

In fact, of course, the 84-year-olds are the bride's parents.

But then her late husband, Ian Dubienski, was old enough to be her father, too.

Not that it matters when September meets December in January.

"He's a good man," Naomi said of her soon-to-be husband.

"Ian would have liked him."

Which reminded Naomi of something else.

"Ian would have been 81," she pointed out. "So I'm marrying a younger man."

Trust a lawyer to plead a case like that.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 23, 2003 $sourceSection$sourcePage