"A painful doubt has entered the hearts of all Peruvian Roman Catholics," said a letter published last week in Caretas, a Lima magazine. "It is very difficult to believe that after more than 40 years of marriage, the church has found that Enriqueta Garland was not President Prado's wife but only his concubine. Does this not make their children, Manuel and Rosa, illegitimate?"
"Doubtful Reader" was referring to the unusual Vatican annulment of the President's first marriage, which let him marry Lima Socialite Clorinda Málaga a fortnight ago (TIME, June 30). In a country famed for its firmness in the Catholic faith, the second marriage stirred a storm —the noisier because the citizens were not told the ground for the annulment.
One day last week a four-column ad in the newspaper El Comercio called on Lima's Catholic women to congregate at Santa Rosa Church, a few blocks from the presidential palace, "as an expression of sorrow and regret before our Holy Father Pius XII in this hour of trial to our faith that has sent a shudder through the hearts of Peru's Catholics. We will pray for our church, for the sanctity of matrimony." Five thousand women—many from Lima's top society—heeded the call, parading past the presidential palace and the cathedral and chanting hymns.
The demonstration persuaded Peru's church hierarchy to attempt an explanation. In a nationwide broadcast, Jesuit Father Ulpiano López, an expert in canon law, declared: "The validity of marriage depends exclusively on the mutual consent and surrender of the two persons who give themselves to each other in love and trust." If consent is obtained by means of falsehoods or threats, the act of marriage is invalid. He cited the case of a man who was compelled to marry under threat of death. The church can declare a marriage null if it finds a condition invalidating it at its inception, concluded Father López.
Was the church suggesting that Prado had been forced into his first marriage? Without answering that question, a Vatican spokesman in Rome certified that the Peruvian President's grown children are not illegitimate, since they had been "sired in good faith." He conceded that the Prado case got "extremely rare" Vatican consideration. Instead of passing the decision of Lima's ecclesiastical marriage court to the Sacred Roman Rota for final action as is customary, the Pope appointed a special committee of cardinals to review Lima's decision. The deliberations took "several years." In the end, the cardinals' committee approved the annulment.