Pope's Olive Branch to Divorcees

Pope Benedict signaled a dramatic break with the past yesterday when he acknowledged the plight of divorcees who are banned from taking communion after remarriage and appealed to a Vatican tribunal to issue ‘rapid’ rulings on annulment requests.

It was the second time this week that the newly elected Pope has displayed strong liberal leanings, confounding his critics and the world’s Catholics and showing another side to his previously stern image, which has been unfavorably compared with his predecessor, John Paul II.

On Wednesday his long-awaited first encyclical - a message to the 1.1 billion members of the Roman Catholic church - was a warm meditation on the power of love and was greeted with astonishment and relief by senior Catholics.

In Rome yesterday he directly addressed a central tenet of Catholic doctrine that has caused distress to many followers of the church, which states that remarried divorcees are regarded as being in a permanent state of sin and cannot receive communion.

The 78-year-old pontiff, in a speech to the Roman Rota - the tribunal that decides annulments - acknowledged that there was ‘pastoral concern’ about the predicament of these Catholics.

He told the panel that its decisions should come quickly for the sake of the faithful. An annulment means that a marriage was invalid, leaving the faithful free to remarry and receive communion.

In his speech to the tribunal yesterday, the Pope said it was very important that annulment rulings emerge in a reasonable amount of time. Some couples who apply for annulments have to wait four or five years for a decision, meaning their lives as Catholics are essentially on hold.

The Pope said, however, that it was also important that couples were helped to try to work out their problems and ‘to find the path of reconciliation’.

The pontiff’s comments came after it was revealed in the Italian press this week that Vatican granted nine out of every 10 annulments requested. In 2004, the last year for which figures are available, 46,060 annulments were requested, of which, 42,920 were granted.

Leading British Catholics hailed the comments. Cristina Odone, The Observer columnist and former editor of the Catholic Herald, said: ‘This is a huge sea change. Just the fact that he mentions it is important. Only a few days he issued the first encyclical... about something we’re all obsessed with, which is love. He acknowledged that sexual love can be the springboard for spiritual happiness, which is a very bold move for any Pope. Here he is saying ... compassion is more important than dogma. It’s an incredible change of the mood.’

Odone said the Pope had surprised Catholic commentators, including herself. ‘He is more open minded than any of us thought... With these steps, he seems to be liberating Catholics from the guilt that they always bring to sex.’

Monsignor Andrew Faley, assistant general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said: ‘He was portrayed as "German Rottweiler to German shepherd". The media based that assumption on him as Joseph Ratzinger the Cardinal Prefect, when he had to be more ‘hardline’. He is now more pastorally focused because he is pontiff. He is showing himself to be a bridge builder, which is what pontiff means.’