Religion: The Trial of Benedetto

A Roman Catholic priest and a Roman Catholic judge collaborated last week in acquitting a man who killed his wife.

The man: Benedetto Gepponi, 68, an Italian laborer. In his youth he had journeyed to the U.S., but he did not make his fortune. After a while he came home and married an Italian girl. They settled in southern France, on the Italian border near Menton, where he grubbed out a living tending fruit trees and gardens. Nine years ago Benedetto's wife Maddalena had a stillborn child, and a year later the nervous shock led to a disease that paralyzed her legs and attacked her liver.

To care for her Benedetto went hungry and in rags. In the hospital Maddalena grew worse, and wrenching spasms of pain made her scream again and again "Ammazzatemi! [Kill me]."

When Benedetto inherited 200,000 francs from a brother in the U.S., he brought Maddalena home and bought her enormous quantities of morphine, but the agony went on. "Buy a gun and do it," she pleaded. "If you die before I do, I'll never forgive you." Finally, he bought the gun.

One night last October, Benedetto knelt beside her bed and together they recited a prayer to the Virgin Mary. Maddalena unfastened her shift and Benedetto fired into her breast, killing her almost instantly. He ran into the street weeping. His neighbors wept with him, as did the policemen who led him to jail.

Last week came the trial. A long line of witnesses testified that Benedetto was a hard worker and a good husband. "This man to me is not a murderer," testified Father Jeanjean, "but rather a suicide's accomplice. If I had had to judge him in the confessional, I would have considered him as a weak man who, like our Lord, bore the cross that had become too heavy for his shoulders." Judge Borricand approved the jury's verdict: not guilty.

"But I am no more for euthanasia than I am for sin," insisted Abbé Jeanjean when it was over. "Gepponi was the unconscious instrumental cause of an act whose victim was the motivating cause."