It is welcome news that the Prime Minister is acting quickly on his pledge to revise the Church-State agreement on marriage annulments.  This week, in fact, he travelled to the Vatican for discussions with the Pope and senior officials from the Holy See to set out the ways and means of reversing this long-standing bone of contention.

For far too long, some 20 years in actual fact, the Maltese courts have been subservient to the Church’s Ecclesiastical Tribunal insofar as marriage annulments are concerned.  The agreement as it currently stands grants supremacy of the Ecclesiastical Tribunals in matters of marriage annulments, meaning that only when the Church Tribunal grants an annulment can the civil courts do likewise.

The 1992 agreement has been in force for far too long and the need for a new concordat between Church and State on civil marriage is long overdue. Moreover, the landscape of marriage and its termination has completely shifted with the recent introduction of divorce to the country.

As a result of that Church-State agreement, signed in 1992 by a Nationalist government, if one spouse requests a marriage annulment before the Church Tribunal, annulment proceedings in the civil courts are placed in suspended animation until the Church Tribunal delivers its verdict.  And if that verdict does not grant an annulment, the civil courts are bound to similarly reject the case in question.

As the agreement in its current format states: “The Republic of Malta recognises for all civil effects, the judgements of nullity and the decrees of ratification of nullity of marriage given by the Ecclesiastical Tribunals and which have become executive.”

The Prime Minister has noted how this arrangement has been used ‘vindictively’ by some spouses to delay separation proceedings as long as possible, and not out of pure religious conviction.

The issue is not just about whether the Church or State has supremacy when it comes to annulments it is wider ranging. The Church Tribunal, for example, bans certain lawyers from representing their clients during the Tribunal’s proceedings - a state of affairs that has denied people appearing before the Tribunal their right to the legal representation of their choice, which is a fundamental right prescribed by the tenets of natural justice.

The Prime Minister had announced the bold step that would essentially scrap, or at least substantially revise, the agreement back in March during a meeting with the Archbishop just after being elected. That was a huge step in the right direction – in the direction of the full accordance of civil liberties that he has promised to implement if and when in power.

And now that he is in power, he is living up to his word. He has promised that under his stewardship of the country, civil liberties will be viewed as fundamental rights rather than as mere concessions, and so far he seems to be keeping his word.

It is high time indeed that the special privileges accorded to the Ecclesiastical Tribunals under the Marriage Act were overturned, brought under the jurisdiction of the civil courts of the land and that a clear distinction between Church and State is made in terms of marriage laws.

This is not purely about removing the Church from the marriage equation, far from it - those devout couples who, for reasons of their own, chose to seek a marriage annulment should be able to bring their case to the Church Tribunal but this should no longer be a matter of course for everyone as it is now.  Just as had been argued during the great divorce debate, those who disagree with divorce for whatever reason, religious or otherwise, should simply not get divorced.  But a blanket ban on divorce for the whole of the country was, the electorate agreed, wrong.

Similarly, anyone seeking a marriage annulment should be able to bring their case to the country’s courts of law without being made subject, against their wishes, to the Church Tribunal. If a couple believes that only the Church can annul their marriage that is all well and good, but the whole of the population should no longer be placed under that umbrella.

The Prime Minister’s relatively quick action in bringing words into action by entering into discussions with the Holy See in this respect is fundamentally positive and is most welcome.