Last summer Pope Francis announced some changes in the processes for handling cases of the nullity of marriage. These changes went into effect this past week on Dec. 8, so I would like to describe them briefly here. Sometimes these cases are popularly referred to as a marriage annulment, but that is technically not accurate, since the church is not declaring an existing marriage to be null, but is examining whether the marriage was null from the outset on one or more grounds that affect the ability of one or both parties to give their valid consent to marry.