THE INSIDER: No room for divorce at church
A Romanian church offers a cramped lock-up for couples whose marriages are on the rocks
If you want to save your marriage and have a few bucks to spend on trying, you and your partner may fancy a short holiday to the small town of Biertan in Romania. There you can try to persuade the local priest to allow you to use the Transylvanian village’s 15th-century church’s "marital prison". This is a room no bigger than a pantry, according to the BBC, which for 300 years served as a lock-up for couples whose marriages were on the rocks. They would be confined for six weeks by the local bishop while they tried to repair their marriage in the tiny space — with only a single pillow and blanket and a small table. In the 300 years that the marital prison was in use, only one divorce was recorded, the village’s current priest was quoted as saying. A business looking for new ideas on how to reduce SA’s high divorce rate may want to set up a marital prison — perhaps in the middle of the Karoo — to see if the concept can work in the 21st century. Of course, cynics will respond that mar...
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