By Hannah Brockhaus
Vatican City, Jan 31, 2025 / 09:15 am
Pope Francis on Friday extolled the “gift of indissolubility” of marriage, which he said is not a limitation on freedom but something married couples live with God’s grace.
The pontiff addressed the topic of marriage’s indissolubility, or permanence, in a meeting with members of the Roman Rota, one of three courts of the Holy See, on Jan. 31. The audience in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall took place for the opening of the tribunal’s 95th judicial year.
The Roman Rota, the Church’s highest appellate court, handles marriage nullity cases. A declaration of nullity — often referred to as an “annulment” — is a ruling by a tribunal that a marriage did not meet the conditions required to make it valid according to Church law.
“Spouses united in marriage,” Francis said, “have received the gift of indissolubility, which is not a goal to be achieved by their own effort, nor even a limitation on their freedom, but a promise from God, whose fidelity makes that of human beings possible.”
Your work of discernment at the Roman Rota “as to whether or not a valid marriage exists,” he continued, “is a service to ‘salus animarum’ [the salvation of souls] in that it enables the faithful to know and accept the truth of their personal reality.”
