Newt Gingrich Asks for Annulment

The Associated Press
May 10, 2002

ATLANTA -  Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is asking the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta for an annulment of his second marriage, which ended in divorce after 19 years.

Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne Gingrich, said Thursday through her attorney that she learned of the request this week when she received a letter from the archdiocese.

The letter, given to The Associated Press, says the annulment request is based on the fact Marianne Gingrich was married previously. Archdiocese officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

“We were married 19 years, and now he wants to say it didn’t exist,” Marianne Gingrich told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The couple were divorced in April 2000, nine months after Newt Gingrich filed for divorce and acknowledged a seven-year affair with Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide. Gingrich and Bisek were married in August 2000.

Gingrich’s spokesman, Rick Tyler, said the former House Speaker had no comment.

The letter was accompanied by a three-page questionnaire asking about Marianne Gingrich’s previous marriage, religious background, baptism and parents.

“No reasons have been given to her for the annulment,” said John Mayoue, Marianne Gingrich’s attorney. She intends to seek a meeting with archdiocese officials to try to learn more about the request.

The couple were married in a Lutheran Church in Leetonia, Ohio, in August 1981 and had no involvement with the Catholic church during their marriage, Marianne Gingrich said.

His first marriage, to his high school geometry teacher Jackie Battley, ended in a messy divorce in 1981.

Gingrich, a speaker and consultant, is head of The Gingrich Group, an Atlanta-based management and communications consulting firm. He lives in McLean, Va., with his wife.

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