Prime Minister's wedding

Comments have been pouring in since the news of twice-divorced Boris Johnson's 'secret' wedding to Carrie Symonds at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday was leaked widely across the media...

Johnson was divorced from his first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1993 and from his second wife Marina Wheeler in 2020. The Catholic Church does not recognise divorce. Those whose marriages have failed, usually need to go to a marriage tribunal to have their first marriage annulled, before they are allowed to marry another person.

Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh explained that the Prime Minister's two previous marriages were unlikely to have been recognised by the Church, as his former wives were not Catholic and they were not married in a Catholic church. He said that a "simple administrative process" would have been be used to declare such marriages invalid.

A statement from the Diocese of Westminster reads: "The bride and groom are both parishioners of the Westminster Cathedral parish and baptised Catholic. "All necessary steps were taken, in both church and civil law, and all formalities completed before the wedding. We wish them every happiness."

Journalist Annabel Smith writes: "If Canon Law allows Boris and Carrie to marry, the church has to marry them. It doesn't look very good, of course, but I'd be seriously worried about belonging to a church which made decisions about marriage based on PR considerations. Or on some random assessment of who is and isn't a sinner. We are all sinners."

Reader Ruby Almeida writes on Facebook: "... the pews are filled with so called 'sinners'. Those who are single parents, the unmarried couples, the sex worker, the drug addict, the asylum seeker, etc who make up the majority and who are the Church. Yet its regulations would shut them out if they made themselves open. Yet for a straight, white man - that privilege gets him a 'no impediment' to marriage. Previous marriages not valid? So what does that make his many offspring and wives in the eyes of God? Seriously!"

Theresa Byrne said: "it would seem that there are no canon lawyers in the Bishops Conference since the loss of Bishop John Jukes RIP and Archbishop Peter Smith RIP nor any media or political savvy people around Westminster Cathedral who could have said "hang on a minute, optics are looking really bad for this...don't get involved" or to say "woah stop right there..."

Missing vital skills like this ends up with this really bad look for the Church and of course one big distraction for government."

Fr Philip Dyer-Perry from Our Lady of the Rosary in Staines disagreed, saying if Boris and Carrie came to him: "I'd marry them - just as I would any other couple with a similar history. Most priests look at the couple, not the optics."

Greg Baines, a Cathedral regular, told ICN: "I congratulate Boris and Carrie. It is wonderful that they have joined our parish. I'm inviting them to one of our Bible study groups, and hope they will join other activities."

Fr Rob Esdaile, parish priest at Our Lady of Lourdes church, Thames Ditton, writes:

"Without making any comment about Boris Johnson's marriage (the full circumstances of which we cannot know), there may be faithful Catholics in need of a word of encouragement as a result of it: those who have been through the heartbreak of failure of a marriage and now find themselves in a relationship which they believe (rightly or wrongly) Church authorities won't ever recognise; those whose partnerships, for whatever reason, do not tick all the right boxes in Canon Law; those who do not believe that 'annulment' is the correct resolution to what they personally have lived through.

All people should find both a warm welcome and the challenge of the Gospel in Christ's Church. Communion must never be seen as a reward for good behaviour. Most relationships are a complete mystery to bystanders. And "Ubi Caritas, Deus ibi est." ("Where is loving kindness, there is God.") Or, to quote today's Gospel: "Know that I am with you always, to the end of time." (Mt 28.20)