Church can't recognise divorcees remarrying - pope

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Mon, Sep 15 08:53 AM

By Philip Pullella

LOURDES, France (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Sunday the Church could not recognise "irregular unions" of Catholics who divorce and remarry outside the Church.

"Initiatives aimed at blessing irregular unions cannot be admitted," he said in an address to French bishops in the shrine city of Lourdes.

Throughout the developed world, the Church has been struggling with how to administer to Catholics who have divorced and remarried without an annulment -- an ecclesiastical declaration that their first union is null and void -- but want to remain fully active in the Church.

The Church does not recognise divorce. It considers the first marriage still valid and teaches that those who divorce and remarry cannot receive communion unless they abstain from sexual relations with their new partner.

While bishops in several countries have been pushing for some opening on the difficult issue, the pope said the Church could not change its teachings on the indissolubility of marriage because it was instituted by Christ.

In other remarks, the pope ordered bishops to make space for traditionalists who use the Latin Mass.

A papal decision last year to allow a much wider use of the old-style mass -- a move which traditionalists demanded for decades but which was opposed by liberals -- has met with resistance in some countries, particularly France.

But the pope was firm in his position.

"Everyone has a place in the Church. Every person, without exception, should be able to feel at home and never rejected," he said of those who preferred the Latin Mass instead of the new liturgy in modern languages introduced after the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965.

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