Rome, Italy, Oct 27, 2005 / 22:00 pm
In an interview published Thursday in the Italian daily La Reppublica, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said the issue of no Communion for the divorced and remarried is closed.
“The case is closed. There is no doubt. The divorced and remarried cannot receive Communion. It makes no sense to raise hopes that the position will be changed,” he said.
The cardinal noted that these cases represent “painful and dramatic situations, and they are a wound that we make our own. But everything has been considered with pastoral prudence and clarity of teaching.”
Those who have divorced and entered into a new union do not have “ a true marriage,” the cardinal maintained, “and they are in an objective situation that is against the will of God and does not allow for them to approach Communion. Therefore I don’t think it is acceptable to discuss this issue as if it were an open question, as if the doors were left open for the future, creating hopes of a possible change.”