Pope is accused of heresy
This is prefaced with all sorts of caveats as I'm not a canon lawyer, pastor, etc and I don't have all the information.
Was she your first wife? Were you baptized, confirmed, received first communion before the marriage? How about her? Were you raising your child in the Church? What did your priest say about your marriage? That it was invalid? Why?
There's lots of questions but the Church does recognize, with some parameters, civil marriage as part of natural law even if it were not elevated to the level of a sacrament. Perhaps as an adult in the Church you were limited in ministry options because you had not had your marriage blessed, sanctioned, and received as a sacrament. And because the Church did recognize some validity to your marriage even without sacramentaltity, there's still a process to go through when you separated.
Just shooting from the hip...
This all sounds about right.
What I would add, is that even if the marriage wasn't deemed valid (or they didn't think it was), to get it officially annulled, you still have to go through the whole process. But your priest won't even let you go through the process, if they don't feel like you have a clear case.
This is why the church was looking into (did they make the change?) to allow the parish or diocese to make the decision on pretty obvious grounds of annulment, and not have to go through the tribunal, and then the second out of diocese tribunal to agree (you needed two tribunals to agree, or else it went to Rome).
EDIT: It looks like it was reformed in 2015 to allow the Bishop's to declare nullity. The overall idea was to make the process shorter and allow the parties/witnesses the ability to participate at minimal or no cost. Before, an annulment cost around $650 (depending on the diocese)
However, I did read this, which makes me wonder if there is something specific holding up
@Grandadmiral Assuming this isn't old news and already dealt with.
"Members of the Catholic Church are required to marry in front of a
priest (or
deacon), and normally with at least one other witness, which can be a layperson. The priest or deacon is not the minister of the sacrament; the man and wife are the ministers by exchanging vows, though the cleric presides over the exchange of the vows and any Mass or nuptial liturgical celebration (CCC 1630). If one of the parties is Catholic, but there is a serious reason why the marriage should be celebrated in front of a civil servant or a non-Catholic minister, a
dispensation can be granted.
If no dispensation was granted and the couple did not observe this law, the marriage is considered invalid. Because the nullity of the marriage is clear from the circumstances there is no need for a canonical process to issue a Declaration of Nullity. The correction of this invalidity requires the couple to exchange their consent according to canonical form (commonly called "convalidation").
I'd imagine there was no need for the Declaration of Nullity.
I will say this. Sometimes you just need to ask again, or talk to a different priest. Might be just as simple as they didn't hear you right the first time. My wife needed an annulment before we could get married, we had a great older Monseigneur, who was very kind, easy going, but thorough about the whole process. Previously she had asked a priest (before we were together) about the process, and her memory is that they were very dismissive of the whole idea, even though she has a pretty straightforward case. Not sure what happened, as I wasn't there and she's not catholic, so she gets more confused than I do.