In January 1971 Agostino Sanfratello from Piacenza and Franco Maestrelli from Milan were the first to request a referendum against the divorce law at the Court of Cassation on behalf of the movement Catholic Alliance.

[2] Signatures and petitions for the 1974 referendum were collected by Christian groups led by Gabrio Lombardo with very strong support from the Catholic church.

The Christian Democrats and the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement intensely campaigned for a yes vote to abolish the law and make divorce illegal again.

Intense campaigning for a no vote also came from Marco Pannella of the Italian Radical Party which had been petitioning for a right to divorce in Italy since the early 1960s.

It was argued that the wording made the statement insufficiently clear, and some campaigners from the no camp stated that without this confusion the no vote might have been even higher than the 59% obtained.