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POPE FRANCIS SACKED a church court official who had been caught offering to facilitate marriage annulments for cash.
The shock revelation came in candid remarks to students attending a course at the Roman Rota tribunal, the equivalent of the Supreme Court for canon law, the body of Church rules.
Telling his audience that he wanted decisions on annulments to be easier, quicker and cheaper to obtain for ordinary people, the pontiff made it clear he regards the current system as deeply flawed.
“We have to be very careful that the procedure does not become a kind of business – and I am not talking about something we know nothing about,” the 78-year-old pope said.
There have been public scandals. Some time ago, I had to dismiss from a tribunal someone who was saying ‘for 10,000 dollars I will do both the civil and the ecclesiastical procedure’.
Francis did not provide any further details of the episode but a Vatican spokesman told AFP he understood the pontiff to have been referring to an episode which occurred prior to him becoming pope last year.
The conditions under which a marriage can be annulled – effectively declared to have never existed – have been a vexed issue for the Church for centuries.
Most notably, the question triggered the 16th Century clash with King Henry VIII that led to the English reformation and the creation of the Church of England.
Justice and charity
In recent times, many critics have voiced concern that annulment appears to be more readily available to the wealthy – a view likely to be reinforced by Francis’s remarks.
Calls for the process to be streamlined were discussed at a recent Vatican synod of bishops on the family and Francis said he supported reform on the grounds of “justice and also charity.”
Citing his home city of Buenos Aires as an example, he said it was not right that parishioners had to take unpaid days off work and travel up to 240 kilometres (150 miles) to attend church court hearings, and then wait years before getting an answer to requests for annulment.
“The mother Church has enough generosity to provide justice freely, as we have been freely justified by Jesus Christ,” he said.
The Church must be able to say, ‘Yes, your marriage is void, or ‘No, it is valid.
As things stand, most annulment requests are dealt with by lower church courts with the consent of two hearings required for an annulment to be granted.
The Roman Rota rules in cases where the two courts disagree or are unable to reach a decision and is charged with ensuring that decision-making on the issue is subject to coherent jurisprudence across the world.
Francis has made a crackdown on corruption within the church one of the dominant themes of his papacy, initiating a shake-up of both the Vatican bureaucracy and its bank in a bid to stem the damage caused by a string of scandals in recent years.
Haha! That’s a good one. Enterprise alive and well in the Vatican! What of Indulgences years ago? Same type of thing almost
The Roman Catholic Church has always bent its rules for financial gain. Hardly news.
You would get a hitman for less…..
Wouldn’t you know it !!!
The mere mention of Pope or Catholic is enough to send the trolls into overdrive and, as usual, they won’t – or can’t – discuss the actual topic in question.
They obviously prefer rant to rationality.
Does this mean that me annulment is annulled Father?
That’s something that still bothers me Tom.
Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, that is a laugh compared to what priests have done in the past and were not sacked. Money, money, money.
Brings me back to learning about the reformation is school.
Wasn’t all the material wealth of the Catholic Church built on the strength of selling indulgences.
A lot of the wealth was plundered from the slaughtered peoples of Sth America.
“The conditions under which a marriage can be annulled – effectively declared to have never existed – have been a vexed issue for the Church for centuries”
Centuries? seems like an issue that would have been solved by now in any competent organisation
The biggest problem they face in annulments is how to explain the children who are the offspring of a marriage that never existed.
Some people are waiting too many years for an annulment. I hope one of the priorities of the synod is to speed up the annulment process. It shouldn’t take 10 years for a yes or a no from the court.
I’m really curious on this question.
If a marriage is annulled, is the state element of it also annulled, and if so on what grounds, seeing as Church and State are legally separate entities and Church can never dictate to State….?
You have answered your own question. The law does not recognise church law where civil law exists. A lawful marriage can only be dissolved by the courts.
The obvious next question then arises Ben….Since an annulment is a formal recognition by the Church that a marriage never existed, and therefore also that the applicant is free to remarry, is the applicant then not a bigamist in the eyes of the state if he/she does? I know of no case where someone was charged with bigamy in those circumstances. If not, why not, seeing as it’s an open and shut case?
That is because everyone who applies for an annulment obtains a civil divorce first and then applies for a church annulment.
No touching their true God €€€€€
The true “God” of the Catholic Church is the adversary.
Can’t blame a fellow for doing a few nixers…
I wonder how much the Nuns got for all those little babies?
But follow him on Twitter lol
You obviously didn’t read that newspaper piece to the end:-
“Vatican officials, noted however, that to obtain indulgences over the internet or otherwise, believers would first have to confess their sins, offer prayers and attend Mass.
“You can’t obtain indulgences like getting a coffee from a vending machine,” Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the pontifical council for social communication, told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.”.
Beliving themselves to be a ‘court’ is exactly the kind of thing that got them into so much trouble as an organisation with clerical child abuse.They are not a court and have about as much legal standing as a group of IRA members interviewing rape victims in Northern Ireland.
Again showing contempt for the law of the land.A cult if ever there was one.
This doesn’t make sense does it? If someone is being charged for an annulment they make not ordinarily get or get in a short time period then they can’t really be practising catholics can they? If they care enough about their religion to want an annulment then surely they know buying one is morally wrong and not legit in the eyes of God ? Don’t they? I can understand the legal divorce bit but why bother buying an annulment you know is not morally right if you are a devout Catholic? Or why bother with the annulment if your not a devout Catholic ? Is it just to get remarried in a church is it all just for show ? Seems pretty ridiculous to me .
No. The people who seek annulments like that believe so blindly in the authority of the church, they believe as long as someone okayed it there, they’re good with god.
Does that really need to be asked? There have always been and always will be huge numbers of such people. “Good Catholics” complicit in child abuse, locking up immoral women, and all other sorts of atrocities. No matter how awful, as long as someone they could see and hear, purporting to represent god, told them they were doing the right thing, their mind was at ease.
We need a modern Cromwell for that lot.
Kizzi
You think the answer is a progrom by a militant religious biggot?
That’s been going on for years
It was always a well known fact that if you have a large contribution to the church ,it eased the path to annulment
Friends of my parents gave £5000 in 1977 to have their daughters marriage annulled
Hypocrisy
And the child abusers?
Now, now, Ailbhe. The Sinn Féin/IRA cultists here won’t like you calling them that – it’s ‘victimisation’.
Marriage is on the decrease anyway thank God
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