Marriage and jurisdiction in Malta : sixty years of relations between the State and the Holy See

Abstract

The establishment of diplomatic relations between Malta and the Holy See in 1965 marked a decisive moment in the history of Church-State relations on the island. Malta had long maintained a deeply Catholic identity, formally recognised also through the constitutional privileging of Catholicism; yet independence in 1964 made it necessary to clarify the respective boundaries of ecclesiastical authority and civil sovereignty. Among the most contested questions was marriage: for the Catholic Church, both a juridical reality and a sacrament, and for the State, the foundational unit of civil society. In the centuries preceding independence, matrimonial life in Malta was regulated almost entirely by Catholic canon law, with civil legislation intervening only in a few matters. This long-standing arrangement was overturned by the Marriage Act of 1975, which inaugurated a new phase in Maltese history by transferring the regulation of marriage into the civil sphere and excluding the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical tribunals. [excerpt]