Pope Francis makes it easier for Catholics to remarry

Pope Francis has unveiled reforms intended to make it
easier for Roman Catholics to get annulments and remarry
within the Church.
Catholicism does not recognise divorce and teaches
marriage is a lifelong commitment.
In order to separate, Catholics must have their marriage
annulled by showing it was flawed from the outset.
The radical reforms allow access to procedures free of
charge and fast-track decisions.
Until now the procedures have been seen as arcane,
expensive and bureaucratic.
Catholics seeking an annulment previously needed approval
from two Church tribunals. The reforms will reduce this to
one and remove the requirement of automatic appeal. An
appeal will still be possible if one of the parties requests it.
The new fast-track procedure will allow bishops to grant
annulments directly if both spouses request it.
Because annulment procedures are complicated, couples
normally require experts to guide them through, meaning
that gaining one can be expensive.
Without an annulment, Catholics who divorce and marry
again are considered adulterers and are not allowed to
receive communion.
Last year, the Pope set up a commission of church lawyers
and clerical experts to look at how to streamline the
procedure.
Writing about the changes, Pope Francis said it was unfair
that spouses should be "long oppressed by darkness of
doubt" over whether their marriages could be annulled.
Caroline Wyatt, BBC Religious Affairs Correspondent
It was a pope's refusal to grant King Henry VIII an
annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in the
16th Century that led to England's break with Rome and the
creation of the Church of England, with the monarch as
defender of the faith.
In the intervening centuries, the process of obtaining an
annulment for ordinary Catholics has remained a lengthy
and costly one.
The move by Pope Francis to simplify and streamline the
process has come to fruition unusually quickly for the
Vatican.
It's only a year since he set up a commission of Church
lawyers to look at reforms to the process.
While they're not expected to change Catholic teaching on
divorce, they are likely to make it easier for estranged
couples to prove that their marriage was invalid from the
beginning.