11 September, 1983,
I have returned to Fiji from holidays and met with Fr Theo today. I was anxious to get all the recent news and gossip from him but I was especially interested in a marriage case I had been involved in investigating and writing up for the Marriage Tribunal.
Manikum had married a Catholic girl about 25 years before but she ran away because of his mistreatment of her. After some further mishaps he finally he found a partner who stayed with him. However Manikum could not receive communion. His partner wanted to enter the Church. She could not be baptized, however, as Manikum and she could not be married in the Church since his first wife was still alive.
I interviewed an elder who had been involved in arranging Manikum’s first marriage. He claimed that both parties had agreed to the wedding when they were asked. I then visited Manikum’s first wife and asked her about the wedding.
“I never wanted to marry him,” she declared. “I knew his reputation as a scoundrel and I knew he would treat me badly.”
“But you agreed to marry him when you were asked,” I replied.
“Yes, because I knew that my father would beat me up if I refused,” she retorted.
“Did you show any sign that you were unwilling,” I asked.
“I cried all day before the wedding, I cried the whole day of the wedding and I cried all the next day too.”
I went to see the elderly Columban priest who had celebrated the wedding. I asked him if he remembered the wedding. “I’ll never forget it,” he said. “I know that all Indian brides cry when they leave their family after the wedding. But I have never experienced crying like that before or since. She never stopped crying!” Now I had corroboration of the lady’s witness. I wrote it all up and handed the case into the marriage tribunal before I left for holidays.
So when Fr Theo told me that Manikum had been granted the annulment of his marriage, that is, an acknowledgment that it was not a true marriage, I said confidently, “the annulment must have been given on the basis of ‘force and fear.”
“No,” said Fr Theo with a wicked smile. “They were first cousins and they hadn’t applied for a dispensation from the bishop.” All my careful detective work overridden by a technical hitch!
Manikum marched proudly up to Communion the following Sunday. He wasn’t seen at Mass then for months.
by Fr. Frank Hoare
