MARRIAGE ANNULMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 276, 20 November 1926, Page 9

MARRIAGE ANNULMENT.

THE MARLBOROUGH CASE. ROTA'S JUSTIFICATION. ROME, November 19. A statement to the British United Press Association has been issued by the Prelate of the Sacred Rota concerning the annulment of the marriage of the Duke of Marlborough. This, say s the Church, never grants a release from marital ties. The decrees of the Rota were simply annulments. In cases like the present one, the tribunal affirmed that matrimony was null and void and that a real, true marriage never existed; therefore no matrimonial ties had been broken. In the present case the judgment was based on incontestable evidence without reference to the social position of the interested parties or the judgment of outsiders. The statement added that 50 cases were presented to the Rota in 1925. In only 10 of these were the marriages annulled. There was incontestable proof in the Marlborough case that moral violence ••as used on the bride, who gave her assent to the marriage under the influence of grave fear. A previous message stated the action for annulment of the marriage had been taken by the former Duchess, previously Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt. Another version said that the Duke, who wished to be admitted to the Roman Catholic Church, found the fact of his divorce a bar, and had consequently sought grounds to have the marriage pronounced null and void. After his divorce from Miss Vanderbilt the Duke married Miss Gladys Deacon, who divorced him last year.