Princess Caroline free to marry

PRINCESS Caroline of Monaco was granted an annulment by the Vatican last week, leaving her free to marry again within the Catholic Church.
The announcement, which follows ten years of study by the Holy See, said that there had been "insufficient consent" between Princess Caroline and her first husband, Phillippe Junot, when they married in 1978.
Vatican spokesman Joaquim Navarro-Valls stressed the decision meant that the marriage "had not existed from the beginning". The pair had not been sufficiently aware of the responsibilities involved in a Catholic marriage.
But Navarro-Valls declined to elaborate on the reasons for the decision taken by the Vatican. He said that a papal tribunal had granted the annulment last February, and that the ruling had been confirmed by a second commission at the end of last month.
Princess Caroline's application for an annulment was registered in 1982. As the daughter of a • Catholic monarch she was able to make the request without the normal preliminary approach to the local Church authorities.
Navarro-Valls denied that the Holy See had afforded special treatment to the Princess on the grounds of her celebrity status. "The entire procedure never went outside the regular general norms valid in the entire Catholic world in Church tribunals," he said.
Princess Caroline's second husband, the Italian Stefano Caisiraghi, was killed in a powerboat accident in 1990. They were married in 1983 in a civil ceremony and had three children.
The princess now spends much of her time in Provence with the French actor Vincent Lindon.
Annulments can be granted by the Church on the grounds of insufficient consent by the partners in a marriage or for other serious impediments or incapacities.