Tribunal field delegates help people with annulment process

When Gail Goleas starts a meeting with someone who is seeking an annulment, she knows exactly what it’s like to be in their place.

Goleas has been a field delegate for the Metropolitan Tribunal, the judicial office of the Archdiocese of Chicago, for 16 years. In that role, she meets with people petitioning for annulments to help the tribunal understand whether they have grounds to believe that the marriage was invalid from the beginning.

Goleas’ first experience with a field delegate was when she applied for her own annulment in 2002 after getting divorced.

Goleas, a pastoral associate at St. Emily in Mount Prospect, walked into the meeting nervous, she said. She left feeling like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

“The delegate was so kind, and she was so helpful, and I left that experience wanting to do my best to pass along what she had given me,” Goleas said.

Now she is one of about 40 English-speaking field delegates. There are also about 18 Spanish-speaking field delegates and a handful of Polish-speakers. All of them minister on a volunteer basis.

When field delegates set up a meeting with a petitioner, they already have a copy of the petitioner’s application and a questionnaire meant to offer more detail as to why the petitioner believes the marriage was invalid, according to Doug Bond, who coordinates the field delegate program for the Metropolitan Tribunal.

The typical case focuses on “the moment of consent,” that is, the time of the wedding, and “whether the marriage consent given by one or both parties was defective,” Bond said. 

“Maybe they were lacking important knowledge or experience for making the decision to marry, or maybe they weren’t able to deliberate properly, or maybe the person did not actually want marriage but got married for some other reason,” Bond said. “There might have been fear or a psychological condition that made it impossible for the person to freely give consent.”

That means petitioners have to think back years or decades, rather than focusing on everything that happened during the marriage. “Our focus on the moment of consent is a real eye-opener for some people,” Bond said.

Generally, field delegates are not the first people petitioners speak to about the annulment process, Bond said.

“They will have already worked with a priest or deacon or other pastoral minister at the local level, or they would have gone online to the tribunal website, and gotten an application and asked a pastoral minister to review and sign it,” he said.

Once petitioners meet with the delegate, the delegate makes a report to the tribunal, which then proceeds with the case, Bond said.

The interview with the field delegate helps elicit information the tribunal needs, explains the process to petitioners and provides a point of pastoral care.

“There’s a legal aspect and a pastoral aspect to this,” Bond said. “People are often under a whole lot of stress. The delegate needs some pastoral skills and to be nonjudgmental, to help them turn the page and get their status in the church clarified.”

Delegates usually spend at least six or seven hours on each case, from reading the application and petitioner’s statement to doing the interview and then writing a report. Most delegates — who can be priests, religious, deacons or laypeople — usually handle no more than one case a month.

“These are really dedicated people, and they put a large amount of time into the cases,” Bond said. “It takes good preparation to be able to meet with someone and know where you’re going and what you need to learn, to separate the information that’s relevant to the case from the information that is less so, that takes time.”

Interviews take about two hours, and are done in parish offices where privacy is guaranteed and where it’s clear that it is a church proceeding, Bond said.

Deacon Ron Pilarski of Mother Theodore Guerin Parish in Elmwood Park said he makes a point of arriving at interviews at least a half-hour early to make sure the room is set up appropriately.

“I always make sure there are tissues in the room,” he said.

Then he prays for the Holy Spirit to guide the conversation.

When the petitioner arrives, Pilarski tries to get any misconceptions out of the way, everything from the idea that children born during the marriage are illegitimate (they’re not) to the concern that the process might not be affordable (no one is turned away for this reason).

“One of the things I try to do early in the meeting is thank them for going through the process of putting their testimony together,” Pilarski said. Pilarski explained that he puts together his reports as quickly as he can and sends them to the tribunal “so the process can begin.”

Pilarski and Goleas said many petitioners want to talk more about the marriage than what led up to it.

“When you’re going through the annulment process, it’s not a case of trying to prove who’s right and who’s wrong,” Goleas said. “It’s based very much on helping people understand better the perceptions and attitudes that brought them to the marriage in the first place. The tribunal is not looking to poke holes in the testimony but to understand what happened. It really can be and is meant to be a healing process.”

Spending time reflecting on what led up to the wedding can help petitioners understand why a marriage did not work.

“It often helps people to get over an unhealthy sense of guilt,” Bond said. “Sometimes people think, I just didn’t try hard enough, or I’m not good enough, when what emerges might be that because of the condition of one party or both, they were not equipped at that time to make a mature judgment about marriage or to fulfill marital obligations. ... Typically, people tend to be in a more hopeful frame of mind when they meet with a sympathetic person who explains the law of the church regarding marriage.”

Delegates ask about a person’s own upbringing, what they experienced as children, Bond said.

“The tribunal is looking at the circumstances that brought this man and this woman to the altar to begin with,” Goleas said. “It’s very unlikely that either of them was standing there thinking, ‘I can’t wait until this whole thing breaks apart.’ But people can go into marriage overlooking things that aren’t going to make that sacramental marriage possible. I try to explain to them why I’m asking about their lives growing up, their formation, their family, information they can give about their former partner’s background.”

Typically, at the end of the interview, the field delegate guides the petitioner in putting together a formal statement that the petitioner writes out as to why the petitioner believes the marriage was invalid from the start, Bond said.

After the petitioner meets with a delegate, the file goes to the judicial vicar and both the petitioner and the respondent — their former partner — are notified that the case is beginning. Every respondent is given the opportunity to talk with a member of the tribunal, to explain his or her position in the case, and to name witnesses.  In addition, each party can have an advocate assigned to help them in the case.

The respondent receives the petitioner’s statement that was written at the end of the interview with the field delegate.

“It’s to try to provide clarity to both parties as to what the case is about,” Bond said. “You can only prove nullity of a marriage in certain defined ways.”

Bond said delegates get training before they begin, including seven hours of class time, as well as mentoring from experienced delegates. Each delegate is appointed for a renewable term and gets ongoing training twice a year.

“They really have to be ready for anything,” he said. “They meet with people who might be angry, seriously distressed, or otherwise in need of pastoral care.”

Pilarski and Goleas said following through with the annulment process can help people heal.

“There really is wisdom in the questions the tribunal asks, and people can come out the other side of the process and say, ‘I can see it all better now,’” Goleas said. “None of it is for naught. God is with us throughout. … There are so many people out there who are hurting, who need some closure, who don’t know much about it and they want to. We would like them to know that there are people ready and able to walk with them, hopefully in a healing manner.”