Pope marries couple on flight after sounding them out

By Cindy Wooden and Junno Arocho Esteves

Love was literally in the air as Pope Francis performed an impromptu wedding ceremony at 36,000 feet aboard his flight in Chile last week – a happy occasion that nonetheless raised eyebrows in some Catholic circles.

During his 18 January flight to Iquique, the Pope was approached by LatAm flight steward Carlos Ciuffardi Elorriaga and asked for a blessing for him and his wife, stewardess Paula Podest Ruiz.

The couple were supposed to be married in their home parish in Santiago on 27 February 2010. However, tragedy struck when an earthquake destroyed the church. Eight years later, they remained only civilly married.

Ciuffardi told journalists aboard the flight that, after he explained their story, he asked the Pope for their blessing.

At that moment, the Pope surprised the couple with offering to marry them right there on the plane.

Ciuffardi said the Pope asked the couple, “Well, do you want to get married?”

“I said, ‘Well, yes. Are you sure?’ Then the Pope said, “Are YOU sure?’ I told him, ‘Yes! Let’s get married,’” Ciuffardi recalled excitedly.

The newlywed said he asked his boss and president of LatAm airline, Ignacio Cueto, to be his best man and one of the Vatican prelates drew up a handwritten marriage certificate.

“The Pope said it was historic! Never has a Pope performed a wedding on a plane!” Ciuffardi said.

Background

Pope Francis’ decision to convalidate the marriage later generated waves of turbulence in the Catholic blogosphere, where respected canon lawyers and priests raised serious questions about the Pope sending a message that marriage wasn’t so serious.

But three days later, the Holy Father gave reporters more of the background, demonstrating that he did not make the decision on the fly and neither did the couple.

“I judged they were prepared, they knew what they were doing,” the Pope told reporters on his 21 January flight back to Rome.

“Both of them had prepared before God – with the sacrament of penance – and I married them.”

When the couple went to the back of the plane and told reporters about it, the whole thing had sounded very spontaneous.

But Pope Francis later told reporters that Ciuffardi also worked on the papal flight to Temuco the day before. Podest, whom he had married civilly in 2010, was not working the 17 January flight.

So the groom had a chance to speak to the Pope alone. “Later, I realised he was checking me out,” the Pope told reporters. They spoke about life, marriage and the family. “It was a nice conversation.”

The couple have two daughters and told the Pope they planned to reschedule the church ceremony but just kept putting it off.

“I questioned them a bit and their answers were clear. It was for life, and they told me they had done the pre-marriage course,” the Pope told reporters. Also, he said, “they were aware that they were in an irregular situation”.

In a 19 December story about the crew chosen to work the papal flights, El Mercurio, a Chilean newspaper, had interviewed the couple. Already then, they raised the hope of Pope Francis blessing their union in flight.

“We would love it. It’s our place; it’s our second home,” Podest was quoted as saying.

“One of you said I was crazy to do this,” the Pope told reporters. But “they were prepared, and if the priest says they are prepared and I decided that they were prepared … the sacraments are for the people”.

“All the conditions were there, that is clear,” he said. So, “why not do it today,” otherwise they could have put it off for another 10 years.

“The Pope saw an opportunity and he worked it,” said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life.

“What he is saying to the priests and to the Church is that God’s time to bestow his blessings upon anybody does not necessarily depend on a rule or a regulation,” the Cardinal said.

Cardinal Farrell said that as bishop of Dallas, he would not allow couples to get married on a ranch or in a park. But the Pope was not celebrating a wedding on the plane, he was convalidating a marriage, and Cardinal Farrell, like most priests, has done that in a variety of settings, including hospital rooms.

“He did what any good pastor will do. I thought it was an example that the Pope set for all of us – that we should not be waiting for the people to come to us, but we should be going to the people,” the Cardinal said. “He came out of the sacristy” as he has urged priests to do.

Convalidating a marriage on a plane “is not the general norm, but it is a way of bringing people back into the Church, into the fold,” the Cardinal said. “Why would we not do that?”

Mgr Cuong Pham, an official at the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, was grateful Pope Francis provided extra details after the event. But even before knowing those details, it was clear that “the Holy Father, of all people, would take it seriously”.

“It is the task of the priest who officiates to take responsibility and be morally certain that couples who ask to be married are prepared and ready for the sacrament,” he said.

That certainty is something that outside observers cannot presume to have.

Besides, he said, “as supreme legislator, the Holy Father has the authority to dispense from and even change merely ecclesiastical laws, if he judges it appropriate”, including canon law’s expectation that weddings take place in a church. Still, the Pope’s officiating at a convalidation in mid-flight is “not meant to be replicated”, Msgr Pham added.

But, he also said he hoped the Pope’s outreach to the couple would encourage priests to be more solicitous toward other Catholic couples who have been married only civilly, finding ways to facilitate the convalidation of their unions as well.

Cardinal Farrell said he hoped other Catholic couples who have married outside the Church would see what the Pope and flight attendants did and realise that “the mercy of God and the blessing of God and the compassion of Christ is open to everybody”.