Pope Francis has appointed a special commission to consider and streamline the annulments process. While we await its findings, a canon lawyer clarifies some misunderstandings that often arise in parish life As a canon lawyer working for the Metropolitan Tribunal of Westminster, some of the most challenging phone calls I deal with are from a prospective bride or groom who has discovered, at the eleventh hour, that their wedding cannot go ahead in their parish church because their fiancé(e) was previously married and divorced. It does not happen often, but when it does the person is usually very upset to discover that this was not identified and dealt with when they first contacted the parish priest about getting married in the Catholic Church. The most common reason why this issue