Church should broaden grounds for annulments - Fr Hillary Tagliaferro

Fr Hilary Tagliaferro has suggested in an interview to The Sunday Times that the Church needs to find ways to annul marriages which should never have been contracted.

"Life has changed and the reasons for an annulment today should be different from those the Church established 10 years ago,"he told Fiona Galea Debono.

Fr Hilary's assessment of marriage in Malta is not a bad one. Far more marriages work out than not, he said. His outlook towards relationships is positive, despite the fact that he considers them one of the "biggest headaches" today's ­society has to face.

"Many marriages that break up were never marriages in their own right in the first place, so I believe the Church must find ways and means of annulling what was never contracted."

Fr Hilary insisted that divorce is not the solution, he is calling for the grounds for annulments to be broadened. "Life has changed and the reasons for an annulment today should be different from those the Church established 10 years ago."

For example, the Church should take into consideration factors like stress, which can lead to depression. "These factors certainly have effects on relationships, but I doubt how much they are considered as grounds for annulment.

"When you delve into the reasons why relationships break down, you find that, from the onset, there was never any love, or good intentions to build something. I think that is reason enough to annul a marriage and enter into a new relationship," he insists.

"Unfortunately, the grounds to annul a marriage are still too tight and limited when the world and life in general have changed - even over the past five years, let alone 30! No wonder we have marriages breaking down after four decades.

"I know of many people who started a second relationship and were successful," he says in the belief that a solution needs to be found for those whose first attempt failed and whose situation he can understand. The Church is aware of this need to widen the grounds for annulments but change takes time and requires much reflection, he adds.

Lengthy as this process may be, Fr Hilary believes the "dynamic" Church, should make changes to suit people's needs. But the principles of the Second Vatican Council to adapt the Church to the modern world have not been applied fully since the 1960s, he continues. "The Church needs to read the signs of the times and adapt to the situation because morals and cultures change... The Church has to change with society."

Fr Hilary also touched on the issue of poverty, which came to fore in comments earlier this month by Caritas Director Mgr Victor Grech. Fr Hilary has no doubt problems of "survival" are on the increase.

"We have parents who do not send their children to school because they do not have a packed lunch for them. This is serious because it means young children are being deprived of an education. "The gap between people who are becoming richer and those getting poorer is growing," he maintains.

"The minimum we can do is provide hand-outs. But there are also situations where more education is needed, especially on how to manage money. Some parents would deprive their children of food and play the lottery instead. But we do not ask questions and we do not judge. We just see people suffering and we help."

See full interview in The Sunday Times