Dr Montserrat Gas, head of the Institute for Advanced Family Studies and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law, took part in a teaching capacity at the VI Corso di aggiornamento per operatori del Diritto (6th Refresher Course for Practitioners of Canon Law), organised by the Faculty of Canon Law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome). In this edition, the course examined the reform of the canonical process for marriage annulment enacted by Pope Francis in 2015 through the Motu Proprio ‘Mitis Iudex Dominus Iesus’. This reform, the most important on this subject in recent centuries, has streamlined and introduced important changes in the processes for obtaining the annulment of a canonical marriage. For this reason, there is an urgent need to train professionals who work in this area of the law.

The course was attended by 250 people who work in ecclesiastical courts all over the world: judicial vicars, judges, defenders of the bond and lawyers. Professor Montserrat Gas gave a class on the relevance of personal faith in the validity of canonical marriage. This is a question that was the subject of debate in synods on the family celebrated in 2014 and 2015 and on which Pope Francis has pronounced in his latest speeches to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota and in the Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The reform of the annulment process also makes references to situations of lack of faith as a possible motive for annulling a marriage.