Pope Francis to announce new annulment procedures

Pope Francis will be announcing new reformed procedures for those seeking annulments of marriages in the Catholic church on Tuesday, international media report.

In his latest move to emphasize God’s merciful nature less than one month before the opening of an anticipated global meeting of Catholic bishops on family life, the pope will be reforming the procedures with two decrees known as motu proprios, the Vatican announced in a brief press note earlier today.

The decrees will be made public during a press conference at mid-day in Rome Tuesday, the National Catholic Reporter adds.

While the content of the reformed procedures is unknown, the announced names of the two decrees -- given in Latin as Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus and Mitis et misericors Iesus -- suggest the reforms put a special focus on Jesus’ qualities of being merciful and meek.

An annulment in the Catholic church is a verdict from a church tribunal that a marriage between two persons was invalidly contracted, and it is often sought by persons seeking to celebrate a different marriage.

The process to procure an annulment has been under special consideration in the past year, following the discussions of a worldwide meeting of bishops known as a Synod of Bishops.

Francis has called two back-to-back synods for 2014 and 2015, to focus on family issues in contemporary society.

With discussions have centering partly on the Catholic church’s pastoral practice towards those who have divorced and remarried without first obtaining annulments, the announcement of the reform of the annulment process comes with unusual speed for the Vatican, as the pope only first appointed a commission to study the matter in August 2014. Couples who are divorced and remarried without obtaining annulments are currently prohibited from taking communion in the church.

The 2015 synod will be held in Rome Oct. 4-25 and is expected to see hundreds of Catholic bishops converge from around the world for the discussions.

Francis has pointedly spoken several times about his desire for reform of the church’s annulment process, which has been criticized by some for being too costly and taking too much time to come to a final decision for the persons involved.

In January, the pontiff told the jurists of the Roman Rota in a special audience that the process should

"Some procedures are so long and so burdensome, they don't favor [justice], and people give up," the pope said then. "Mother church should do justice and say: 'Yes, it's true, your marriage is null. No, your marriage is valid.' But justice means saying so. That way, they can move on without this doubt, this darkness in their soul."