Church’s new annulment procedures to affect thousands of Catholics

Pope Francis has substantially and significantly altered the process for Catholics seeking marriage annulments in the church, eliminating sometimes lengthy and redundant judicial procedures and empowering local bishops to make judgments on their own in “particularly evident” cases.

The changes were announced at the Vatican Tuesday, with release of two formal documents signed by the pope known as motu proprios.

The main change is a decisive delegation of power from the church’s central command, to bishops.

In a short introduction to the new changes, Francis explained that he wanted to balance the church’s timeless worry to provide for the salvation of souls with “the enormous number of faithful that… too often are detached from the juridical structures of the Church at the cause of physical or moral distance.”

“In total harmony with these desires, I have decided to give with this ,otu proprio arrangements that do not favour the nullifying of marriages but the promptness of the processes,” Francis stated so that “the heart of the faithful that wait for the clarification of their state may not be oppressed for a long time by the darkness of doubt.”

An annulment in the Catholic church is a decree from a church tribunal that a marriage between two persons was invalidly contracted. Such a decree is often sought by persons who are seeking to celebrate a different marriage.

The changes announced by Francis modify the procedures for obtaining annulments in two key ways: Eliminating a sometimes lengthy process requiring a second judgment on all annulment decisions; and allowing local bishops a so-called “shorter” process to personally judge on cases considered particularly straightforward.

Francis gave examples of when a bishop might be able to decide an annulment on his own authority without using the normal process of the church tribunal.

Included in those examples: When there was a clear lacking of faith on the part of one of the persons consenting to the marriage, when one person was in another undisclosed relationship at the time of marriage, or when one party procured an abortion – indicating that they were not open to the procreation of life.

The changes also allow any first appeals of annulment decisions to be made at the local level instead of at the Vatican.

The Pope said he wanted to offer the new process to bishops so that it can “be applied in cases in which the accused nullity of the marriage is sustained by arguments particularly evident.”

“It has not escaped me how an abbreviated judgment might put at risk the principle of indissolubility of marriage,” the Pope said. “Indeed, for this I wanted that in this process the judge would be composed of the bishop, that in the strength of his pastoral office is, with Peter, the best guarantee of Catholic unity in the faith and discipline.”

The changes are to go into effect on 8 December, the opening day of the upcoming Jubilee Holy Year for Mercy and the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council.

Francis’s decree for the Latin rite churches effectively updates and changes canons 1679-1691 in the church’s Code of Canon Law.

The pope also attached to that decree 20 new “procedural rules” for bishops dealing with annulment cases, saying he wanted to offer them as “other instruments” for tools in their work on those matters.

Among other significant changes in the decrees: Francis also mandates that annulment procedures be made free of charge around the world, and also asks that bishops create some sort of structure in their dioceses that can guide and help separated Catholics considering divorce and/or annulment.

Francis has called two back-to-back synods for 2014 and 2015, to focus on issues facing families in contemporary society. The discussions have centered partly on the Catholic church’s pastoral practice towards those who have divorced and remarried without first obtaining annulments, who are currently prohibited from taking communion in the church.

Reform of the annulment process also comes with unusual speed for the Vatican, as the pope only first appointed a commission to study the matter in August 2014.