Judges in Padua ruled on Tuesday that children could have two mothers listed on their birth certificates, a victory for rights campaigners in Catholic-majority Italy.

The court rebutted an order by the prosecutor's office for city authorities to retroactively remove non-biological mothers from the birth certificates of 37 children dating back to 2017.

"It's wonderful news," lawyer Michele Giarratano, who represented 15 of the children, told AFP.

Had they been removed, the non-biological mothers risked losing access to their children if the other parent died or the couple separated.

Giarratano said, however, that the prosecutors or the interior ministry could appeal against Tuesday's ruling.

In a similar case, a Milan court ruled in June last year that a child's birth certificate could have two mothers listed on it -- but that decision was overturned on appeal last month.

Civil unions became legal in Italy in 2016 but the law on parental rights for same-sex couples is unclear.  

 'War against children' 

 Italy's highest court has urged successive parliaments to clarify the parental rights of gay couples -- so far in vain.

Encouraged by several court rulings, local mayors have in recent years been registering both biological and non-biological parents on birth certificates.

But in January 2023, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's hardline interior minister ordered town halls to stop transcribing certificates of children born abroad through surrogacy -- which is illegal in Italy -- citing a recent court ruling.

In response, prosecutors across the country began contesting birth certificates of children born to same-sex parents -- whether through surrogacy or not.

"Beyond the favourable outcome... there remains the political fact of a political party waging an ignoble war against children," said Gabriele Piazzoni, secretary general of Italy's largest LGBTQ+ rights group Arcigay.

Meloni, a self-declared "Christian mother" and leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, rails against the "LGBT lobby" and says children should only be raised by heterosexual parents.

Piazzoni said that in ordering the removal of non-biological mothers from their children's birth certificates, the prosecutors' office in Padua had been "driven by an entirely ideological fury".