Archbishop makes plea for excluded divorcees

New Zealand's top Catholic bishop has stirred controversy in Rome by challenging the "scandal" of spiritual hunger suffered by divorcees who remarry but are barred from communion.

"The scandal of those hungering for Eucharistic food needs to be addressed, just as the scandal of physical hunger needs to be addressed," an outspoken Archbishop John Dew of Wellington told a gathering of more than 250 bishops at the Vatican.

Archbishop Dew, newly installed as the head of the Catholic Church in this country, called on the synod to take a pastoral approach to include "those who are hungering for the Bread of Life".

"Our church would be enriched if we were able to invite dedicated Catholics, currently excluded from the Eucharist, to return to the Lord's table."

Although many Catholics theoretically barred from communion are believed to ignore the prohibition, one woman who found herself in that category after marrying a divorcee told the Herald last night that she had felt stigmatised for many years.

This was no longer the case only because her husband, whose first marriage failed, was now dead.

"I'm widowed so I am restored in the eyes of the church," she said.

The woman, who did not want to be named given her continuing role in the church, said she had kept taking communion thanks to an understanding priest who allowed her to "just get on with it".

Archbishop Dew spoke in Rome of the plight of those who had never abandoned the church but, because their first marriages ended in sadness, were excluded from the Eucharist.

"We acknowledge them to be baptised in Christ in the sacrament of marriage, but not in the reception of the Eucharist," he said.

Archbishop Dew is not a lone voice at the synod, which will end in two weeks with recommendations to Pope Benedict.

Bishop Pierre-Antoine Paulo of Haiti said church leaders had to ask themselves whether in particular cases, as already happened for "certain sinners", communion could not be given to remarried divorcees.

But Archbishop Angelo Scola of Venice, who is chairing the synod, said communion was a gift rather than a right.

The church does not recognise civil divorce and only allows annulments, or rulings by ecclesiastical tribunals that a marriage never existed because it lacked prerequisites such as free will or psychological maturity by one or both partners.

So millions of Catholics worldwide who have divorced in civil courts and remarried outside the church - and still consider themselves good Catholics - are banned from receiving communion, which the church teaches is the body and blood of Christ, because they are considered to be living in sin.

Former Auckland priest and radio broadcaster Clive Littin described as a nonsense the church's annulment of a marriage of a strong Catholic couple he had put through a full nuptial mass.

That was the only way the estranged couple could get back to the communion table with clear consciences, he said.

"Here I am a Catholic priest putting them through the full book and they get it annulled, which means the marriage never took place. Well, hello, how the heck do you work that out?

"It is so unjust, it is disgraceful, it is embarrassing."

But Father David Tonks, pastoral assistant to the Bishop of Auckland, said he would never as a priest have turned away a remarried divorcee who came forward for communion.