Canon Lawyers Weigh In on Archbishop’s Nullification of a Trans Couple’s Catholic Marriage

Solange Ayala and Isaias Díaz Núñez at their wedding ceremony.

After the recent Catholic wedding of a transgender man and woman was declared null and void by the local archbishop,questions have arisen over the licitness of the archbishop’s decree. 

When Solange Ayala, a trans woman, married her partner, Isaías Díaz Núñez, a trans man, at Our Lady of Pompeii parish in Corrientes, Argentina, it was initially celebrated as a joyous event. That joy soon soured, however, when the archdiocese began raising questions about the marriage, ultimately resulting in Archbishop José Adolfo Larregain announcing that the marriage was invalid due to canonical deficiencies and issuing a decree of nullity. 

Subsequently, the parish also released a statement echoing the archdiocese’s explanation, and the priest who celebrated the marriage, Franciscan friar Fernando Luis Gómez, has temporarily left the region. 

According to katholisch.de, the couple only learned about the annulment from the media, and now have questions of their own regarding the ability of the archbishop to unilaterally declare a marriage to be null and void. “If it were easy to declare a marriage invalid, there would have to be divorce within the Church. And in the Church, you only get married once,” Ayala said.

The couple are not the only ones questioning the archbishop’s actions. Several canon lawyers have now cast suspicion not only on the archdiocese’s justification of declaring the marriage to be invalid but also on the way in which the archbishop chose to nullify the marriage. 

Georg Bier, emeritus professor of canon law at the University of Freiburg, discussed his concerns with Felix Neumann of katholisch.de, noting first the inaccuracy of the archbishop’s claim that the couple’s marriage did not meet the “form and substance” requirements for a valid sacrament. The news article reported:

“‘The distinction between matter and form is inherently difficult with this sacrament and doesn’t function in the same way as with other sacraments,’ Bier said. The matter and form of the sacrament of marriage are generally understood to be the marital consent, and “‘that should have been in order here,’ says Bier. ‘And even if one were to consider the bride and groom as the “matter’”of the sacrament, we would still be dealing with a man and a woman.’”

While these facts do not automatically mean that the marriage is valid, Bier says, the concepts of form and matter are not a proper justification for declaring that the marriage is invalid. 

As for what the Catholic Church says about transgender people in relation to the sacraments, Neumann turned to a confidential note from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith written in 2018 which was never published but was obtained by katholisch.de. This “confidential note on certain questions of canon law relating to transsexualism” ultimately concluded that regardless of whether an individual has physically transitioned, it is not possible for them to enter into a valid marriage. 

According to the note, this is because the lifelong union that marriage represents “must necessarily be an expression of the mutual self-giving of both spouses in their gender difference,” which the authors say cannot be achieved by trangender partners. This is true for those who have undergone gender-affirming procedures (referred to as “attempted gender reassignment” by the note) and even true for those who experience gender dysphoria, which the note refers to as a “psychosexual disorder” that “prevents the assumption of essential marital obligations and renders the person incapable of entering into marriage–” even if they do not actually transition in any way.

Based on this note, a couple in which even just one of the partners is transgender–whether they have physically transitioned or not–would not be permitted to enter the sacrament of marriage.

However, Neumann points out, this case is not about granting a couple permission to marry but rather dealing with a couple that has already been married in the Church. “The archbishop’s intention to simply declare the marriage void by decree does not conform to the canonical procedure for establishing the nullity of a marriage,” he says.

“I know of no norm that would allow the invalidation of a marriage ex officio, without a proper annulment process,” Bier emphasizes.

Canon 1060 of the Code of Canon Law states: “Marriage enjoys the legal favor of the Church; therefore, in cases of doubt, the validity of the marriage is to be upheld until proven otherwise.,” states canon 1060 of the Code of Canon Law, meaning that this marriage ought to have been at least initially protected under canon law until official annulment procedures were followed.

This view is supported by Thomas Schüller, a canon lawyer from Münster, who stated: “This Argentinian marriage cannot simply be declared null and void by a bishop’s decree, because the legal presumption of validity also applies to it, but must be declared null and void through a formal annulment process.”

Typically, the Church’s annulment proceedings are initiated by one or both partners as plaintiffs, however canon law provides another option when neither member of the couple desires the annulment: a lawsuit by the Church’s advocate, the “Promotor iustitiae.” This individual has the right to bring a case “when the nullity of a marriage is already known, but its validation is not possible or expedient,” which, according to Schüller, applies in this case. 

However, this is not what took place for this couple. Instead, with no canonical precedent to support his decision, the archbishop simply issued a decree to nullify the marriage. Given that proper canonical procedures were not followed, the likelihood is high that the couple could appeal the decree of nullity and have a good chance of it being overturned. Yet doing so would likely only result in the marriage once again being declared null and void after a canonically proper investigation is filed. 

Thus, a closer examination of the canonical arguments surrounding this case does not produce much hope for transgender people seeking marriage– a fact that Schüller acknowledges with sympathy:. 

“The Catholic Church should finally acknowledge that there are people who were born in the ‘wrong’ body and suffer immensely as a result. The Catholic Church has not yet reached this point in its doctrinal development, which is deeply regrettable for the sake of these people.”

—Phoebe Carstens, New Ways Ministry, March 8, 2026