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When Pope Francis announced this week that he was making changes to the way the Church deals with marriage breakdown, it was, according to a Vatican expert on the Church’s canon law, the biggest change to its marriage regulations since the mid-1700s. What Pope Francis did this week was to make marriage annulments quicker, cheaper and a more people-centred than bureaucratic process. Catholic marriage is permanent and cannot be ended by divorce. An annulment is something else: it means that the marriage is declared null and void because of a problem at the start. One of the couple, say, might have felt pressured into it by a parent, or kept the truth hidden about a continuing extra-marital relationship. But even if annulment’s not Catholic divorce, it’s clear that a couple opting for an annulment do so because the marriage has failed. Pope Francis has said he wants to help people alienated from the Church because annulments are so complex, but also that the changes were motivated by mercy. Mercy is fast becoming the key word of this papacy. It also shaped Pope Francis’ comments last week about women who have abortions. It is in part due to the profound influence of the theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper who gave Francis his book on mercy just days before he was elected pope. Traditionally Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular, focused heavily on sin, wrongdoing and failure, something which Kasper says is a catastrophe. Rather, he shifts the emphasis to a forgiving God, whose mercy is boundless. Because mercy is part of justice, this new theology suggests, justice should not be punitive, but should be about reconciliation. This reflects that relationship is central to ideas of mercy. In other words, God is not someone who doles out rewards for good behaviour, like someone training their pet dog. Instead God is someone humanity encounters and mercy is his central attribute. If that is so then it should be central to Christian lives too, says Kasper, reflected in words and deeds when people engage with one another. It’s a simple yet difficult way to live, not just for individuals but for an institution like the Church. And in October, a synod called by Pope Francis will consider whether that mercy should also lead to a rethink about Catholics who’ve had a civil divorce and whether they should receive Communion. Certainly, with his approach to annulment, Pope Francis is insisting that mercy must be the way forward for the Church – even if it took since the 1700s to get there.