(Updated 9:43 p.m.) Pope Francis on Tuesday published details of reforms which will make it easier, quicker and free for Catholics to have their marriages annulled.

 

In a letter to believers, the Argentinian pontiff said annulments would require approval by only one church tribunal, rather than two as currently. A streamlined procedure is to be introduced for the most straightforward cases and access to hearings will not cost anything, the letter states.

 

An annulment, formally known as a "decree of nullity", is a ruling that a marriage was not valid according to Church law because certain prerequisites, such as free will, psychological maturity and openness to having children, were lacking.

 

Francis said the procedures needed to be speeded up so that Catholics who sought annulments should not be "long oppressed by darkness of doubt" over whether they could have their marriages declared null and void.

 

Most annulments are granted at a local level and only the most complicated cases reach a special court at the Vatican, known as the Rota. Francis said the procedures, which can cost thousands of dollars in legal fees, should be free.

Monsignor Pio Vito Pinto, dean of the Vatican court that rules on annulments, told a news conference the new rules were the most substantive changes to annulment laws since the papacy of Benedict XIV, who reigned from 1740 to 1758.

 

The reform was keenly awaited by many couples around the world who have divorced and remarried outside the Church.

 

The 1.2 billion member Church does not recognise divorce and Catholics who re-marry in civil ceremonies are considered to be still married to their first spouse and living in a state of sin. This bars them from receiving sacraments such as communion.

 

Many couples and priests have complained that the current procedures are outdated and too complicated, and discourage even those with legitimate grounds for an annulment from trying. 

Mercy and compassion

In the Philippines, an official of a commission of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines said Pope Francis' latest set of reforms was consistent with his theme of mercy and compassion.

"Streamlining annulment process will ease a prolonged misery and suffering of couples seemingly living in hell if and when the evidence for annulment is blatantly clear," said Fr. Francis Lucas, executive director of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Social Communication and Mass Media.

"This is in tune with the Pope's theme of mercy and compassion. Mercy is at the core of Jesus Christ's redemptive suffering and death towards the triumph in His resurrection," Lucas told GMA News Online.

Church doctrine

 

Vatican experts in canon, or religious, law have spent the last year studying how the system could be streamlined without undermining the principle that marriage is for life.

 

That is one of the fundamental tenets of the Catholic faith, albeit one at odds with the reality that, across much of the industrialised world, divorce is commonplace even amongst believers.

 

Church doctrine does make allowance for unions to be effectively cancelled, subject to certain conditions.

 

Essentially a church tribunal must rule that the marriage was fundamentally flawed from the outset and that ruling must then be upheld by a second tribunal.

 

Possible justifications for reaching this conclusion include the marriage having never been consumated, one or both partners having entered into it without the intention of staying in the relationship, or one of the partners having no desire to have children.

 

Alcohol and drug dependency can also be taken into consideration when a tribunal decides whether a marriage can be annulled.

 

In practice, the process of securing an annulment is frequently extremely lengthy. 

 

In many parts of the developing world, dioceses simply do not have annulment tribunals.

 

And where they do exist, many ordinary Catholics cannot afford to employ the expert help needed to guide them through the arcane procedures required to secure the necessary approval.. —reports from Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Rose-An Jessica Dioquino, Xianne Arcangel/NB/JST, GMA News