The Vatican again on Saturday strongly condemned same-sex marriages as well as states which have legalised the practice, during an audience between Pope John Paul II and members of the Holy See’s top appeals court.
”Homosexual unions and cohabitation cannot be considered as marriages,” Polish Cardinal Antoni Stankiewicz, the most senior judge on the Roman Rota, stressed in an address to the pope.
”To treat homosexual unions the same as marriages, as has been done under the laws of certain countries, does not make them any more valid, whether or not they are legal,” he said.
The Roman Catholic Church has labelled homosexuality ”a troubling moral and social phenomenon”, while staunchly defending traditional marriage as the basis for society.
John Paul II himself made no explicit reference to same-sex marriages, although he accused Roman Catholic tribunals of laxity in agreeing to annul religious marriages.
The Roman Rota acts as an appeal’s court in dealing with marriage annulments, intervening when two lower courts reach conflicting rulings in an annulment case.
Out of 135 cases handled by the Rota in 2002, annulment was refused 73 times.
The ailing 84-year-old pontiff warned the Rota judges against ”defendants who will resort to forgeries or even corruption in order to secure a favourable ruling”.
He also cautioned against the practice of annulling marriages simply on the grounds that they had failed. Annulment is usually granted on grounds of immaturity of one of the spouses, or a defective marriage agreement. – Sapa-AFP