NOT A DIVORCE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 48, 20 November 1926, Page 9

NOT A DIVORCE

MARLBOROUGH MARRIAGE

ANNULMENT

STATEMENT OF PRELATE

OF SACRED ROTA

(Rec. November 19, p.m ) Rome, November 19. A Prelate of the Sacred Rota made a statement as follows concerning the Duke of Marlborough’s annulment ot marriage by the Pope:— “Judgment was based on incontestable evidence, without reference to the social position of the interested parties or the judgment of outsiders. Insinuations arc often made in these matters that the Church,. on the tiretext of annulling marriages, really grants divorces by roundabout ways. There is no need to say that the Church has absolutely never granted a release from marital ties. The decrees of the Rota are sintplv annulments. Ihe tribunal in cases like the present affirms the matrimonv null and void, and that a real true marriage never existed, therefore no matrimonial tics been broken, as they "ever existed from the beginning. Theie v.'cre fifty cases presented during 1925, and in only ten were found elements making them subjects of annulment. In the Marlborough case there was incontestable . proof that moral violence was used on the bride, who gave Iter assent under the influence of a grave fear.