Family visits now allowed, but who exactly is family?

ROME — When Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said the government would relax some parts of a nationwide lockdown, residents entering an eighth week of home confinement to inhibit the coronavirus dived for their dictionaries.

Conte announced that starting May 4, people in Italy will be permitted to travel within their home regions for visits with congiunti, a formal Italian word that can mean relatives, relations or kinsmen. Under the lockdown, Italians only have been able to leave home for essential jobs or vital tasks such as grocery shopping.

The country’s coopedup citizens sought clarification. Which relatives? What relation? Would a secondcousin count as kin? A brotherinlaw? The additional freedom previewed by the premier seemed to rest on a clunky, archaicsounding noun.

The correct definition is more than pedantic in Italy, a country where the generous concept of family embraces extended clans tied by blood or marriage. Whatever the government’s intent, congiunti would be part of what stitches much of Italian life together.

Conte sought to clear up the confusion, but he created more. The premier allowed that congi

unti is a “broad and generic formula.” What he meant, he said, was Italians could pay visits to “relatives, and to those with whom they have relationships of steady affection.”

Godparents? Longtime lovers? Couples engaged for years but without setting a wedding date, as is frequently the case in Italy?

An early morning talk show on state radio tried to parse what ties of “steady” or “stable” affection mean. Calls and text messages poured in.

One guest, a lawyer who specializes in marriage law, said he has met couples together for only a week with more stable relationships than some spouses who have been married for years.

As far as the issue of home regions is concerned, the show’s host raised the possibility that someone who lived in eastern Sicily could drive hundreds of miles across the island to see relatives, but couldn’t visit a loved one just miles away in Calabria, a different region across the Strait of Messina.

When Italians finally determine whom they can visit, they’ll have to puzzle out how to express affection when they arrive. The new measure requires all to wear masks and stay a safe distance apart.