The St. Monica Catholic Church is on the defensive after Britney Spears claimed the house of prayer wouldn’t allow her and husband Sam Asghari to get married there.
A rep for the Santa Monica, Calif., church told TMZ Wednesday that they checked their records and Spears never visited the church, nor did she ask them to host her nuptials.
However, the church rep did admit that at least one spouse has to be Catholic in order to tie the knot in the house of worship.
The spokesperson reportedly explained that the photo Spears had posted was captured from a live stream and was not a pic she snapped herself. The church reportedly knows the couple getting married in the photo, a wedding that Spears had not attended.
The “Toxic” singer, who was raised Baptist and has also studied Kabbalah, had taken to social media to post a photo of the interior of the church and claimed that she wanted to marry there, but wasn’t allowed because she isn’t Catholic and they also require a test.
“This is where I originally wanted to get married during COVID !!!!” the pop star captioned a since-deleted photo of the church on Instagram Tuesday. “I wanted to go every Sunday … it’s beautiful and they said it was temporarily shut down due to COVID !!!! Then 2 years later when I wanted to get married there they said I had to be catholic and go through TEST !!!!”
Spears then asked her 41.8 million Instagram followers, “Isn’t church supposed to be open to all ????”
The “Crossroads” alum, 40, and Asghari, 28, ended up getting married in the backyard of her mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., in June where guests at the fairytale wedding included Madonna, Paris Hilton, Drew Barrymore and Selena Gomez. Donatella Versace, who also attended the wedding, designed Spears’ wedding dress.
She and Asghari, who met in October 2016, took their love public after a year of dating and got engaged in September 2021.
Spears shared with the world that she was unable to marry Asghari and start a family with him because of her restrictive conservatorship. But in November 2021, her 13-year conservatorship was terminated, paving the way for the couple to get married and try for kids.
Spears revealed in April that she was pregnant. However, she suffered a miscarriage in May. Still, the pair vowed they would “continue trying to expand [their] beautiful family.”
Spears shares two sons — Sean Preston, 16, and Jayden James, 15 — with ex-husband Kevin Federline, to whom she was married from October 2004 to July 2007. She was also married to her childhood friend Jason Alexander — who was arrested for breaking into her house on her and Asghari’s wedding day — for just 55 hours in January 2004.
Spears’ kids did not attend her wedding to Asghari. Her estranged parents, Jamie Spears and Lynne Spears, and her siblings, Bryan Spears and Jamie Lynn Spears, also did not make the guest list after having a falling out over her conservatorship.