Vatican Allows Nuns, Lay People to Perform Marriages in Alaska

Following a recommendation of the U.S. bishops, the Vatican has granted permission for the archbishop of Anchorage, Alaska, to delegate nuns and lay people to perform marriages.

The Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship granted the special permission when priests or deacons are not available, according to the Washington-based United States Catholic Conference.

Church law ordinarily requires marriages to be performed by ordained priests or deacons. But that is a problem in the far-flung Anchorage archdiocese, which has a number of remote parishes without resident clergy in its 140,000-square-mile area.

That requirement can be bypassed by a bishop under certain conditions, however, as Archbishop Francis T. Hurley already has done. The archbishop said he constantly has to send priests or deacons to the isolated parishes in his archdiocese for sacramental functions. But Hurley wanted a more permanent solution to the problem on the books.

The Anchorage archbishop, who flies his own plane among the 20 parishes and 10 missions there, raised the issue at a national meeting of U.S. bishops in Baltimore in November. The archbishop told them about an experience he had the previous May when he authorized Sister Carol Ann Aldrich, the administrator of the church in Valdez, Alaska, to marry a local couple after bad weather prevented him from flying there. It is believed to be the first time a nun performed a valid marriage in the United States.