Marriage

Pakistan’s Catholic bishops have expressed scepticism after the government announced a review of a court ruling which upheld the marriage of a 13 year old Christian girl to the Muslim man accused of abducting and forcibly converting her The Catholic Church in Pakistan has expressed scepticism over government attempts to review a court ruling which upheld the marriage of a 13-year-old Christian girl to the Muslim man accused of abducting and converting her. Maria Shahbaz, from Lahore, was reportedly abducted in July 2025 after leaving her home to visit a nearby shop. According to her family, she was forcibly converted to Islam and married to Shaheryar Ahmad, a 30-year-old Muslim man. On 25 March, Pakistan’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the marriage was valid under Sharia law and that Ahmad was the girl’s lawful guardian, rejecting a petition filed by her father, Shehbaz Masih. The judgment prompted protests, press conferences and demonstrations by Christian groups across Pakistan, while the country’s Catholic bishops asked the authorities to intervene. Attaullah Tarar, Pakistan’s federal minister for information and broadcasting, announced on Easter Sunday that the government had established a committee to examine the ruling and submit recommendations to the Ministry of Law and Justice. Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad, president of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, questioned whether the initiative would lead to any meaningful action. “These issues often subside by the time such committees make their reports public. The process is deliberately delayed so that people forget,” he told EWTN News. “This is fundamentally a religious freedom issue. Consent is often coerced from minors. We await a genuine response from the government. Many Muslim clerics support us but have avoided joining public protests,” the bishop said. Documents submitted by the family, including a certificate issued by Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority, stated that Maria was 13 at the time of the marriage, below the legal minimum age of 18 in Punjab province. According to the Centre for Social Justice, at least 515 cases involving the abduction and forced conversion of minority girls and women were reported between 2021 and 2025. Hindu girls accounted for 69 per cent of the cases, while Christians represented 31 per cent. Most victims were under the age of 18. Anthony Naveed, deputy speaker of the Sindh Assembly, wrote to the Ministry of Law and Justice on 6 April calling for amendments to provincial laws dealing with child marriage. He urged the federal government to address what he described as “serious legal gaps” exposed by the ruling and called for legislation in line with the law in Balochistan province, where child marriages are explicitly invalidated.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, says baptisms of young children have fallen by 31.1 per cent and Catholic marriages by 48 per cent since 1991, warning of a weakening transmission of the faith within families Cardinal Kevin Farrell has warned of a sharp global decline in Catholic baptisms and marriages, pointing to figures showing a sustained weakening in the transmission of the faith within families over the past three decades. Speaking at a Vatican study seminar on marriage formation held in the Vatican Gardens on April 28, the prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life cited data from the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2021 indicating that between 1991 and 2021 the number of baptisms administered worldwide to children under the age of seven fell by 31.1 per cent, while Catholic marriages declined by 48 per cent. “The transmission of faith within families is weaker now than in the past,” Cardinal Farrell said. “According to the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2021 , between 1991 and 2021, the number of baptisms administered worldwide to children under the age of seven declined by 31.1 per cent, and Catholic marriages by 48 per cent.” The cardinal added: “Faced with these figures, we must not lose heart; rather, we must remain fully aware of them so as to transform this situation into an opportunity for ecclesial renewal.” The remarks were delivered during a study day entitled The Sacrament of Marriage, Faith, and the Munus Docendi , which brought together representatives of the Roman Curia, seminary rectors, theologians and those involved in priestly formation. The gathering focused on how future priests are trained to teach and accompany families in a rapidly changing cultural environment. In a text published in L’Osservatore Romano , Cardinal Farrell said that “profound cultural transformations have redefined the processes of family formation”, noting that the bond between couples is “increasingly seen as an individual experiment, less and less as a definitive bond”. “Marriage is no longer considered necessary for the formation of a family alliance,” he said, adding that cohabitation has become “the choice, now considered almost obligatory by many, to test the couple’s stability with a view, though not always, to a stronger future bond”. He said these developments pose “urgent” challenges for the Church, particularly in youth and family ministry, and pointed to reports from bishops during their ad limina visits describing “enormous difficulties in reaching the families of baptised faithful who no longer come to the Church”. The cardinal asked how the Church might make its teaching mission more effective so that “new generations of priests can raise children and young people in the faith, cultivate in them the Christian vocation of marriage, and accompany families in the value-based challenges of our time”. The seminar also heard from Fr Andrea Bozzolo, rector of the Pontifical Salesian University, who emphasised the need for “pastoral guidance” that combines biblical and theological formation with an understanding of contemporary cultural realities and “listening to concrete family experiences”, with particular attention to “the emotional and sexual education of adolescents and young people”. Fr Fabio Rosini, a biblical scholar and professor of homiletics and pastoral theology, warned against a model of priestly formation that remains detached from lived experience. “If we continue to train priests to be producers of a penultimate life, it won’t be of much use to sacramentally married couples, and it won’t matter what they have to say,” he said. “We run the risk of continuing to sell the world to the world.” He added that “after centuries of parenthetical language, after the conciliar revival of kerygmatic language, given the need to proceed with the pedagogy that leads to Baptism, the time has come to return to didactic-instructive language”. Cardinal Farrell said that while many seminaries and pontifical universities provide solid theological teaching on the sacrament of marriage, this “risks remaining theoretical” if it is not connected to the realities of family life and the cultural conditions in which people live. “This makes it difficult for many pastors to effectively engage with the world of young people and families as it presents itself today,” he said, referring to “families marked by processes of de-Christianisation, young people disinterested in marriage, or coming from fragile and discontinuous family situations”. He added that requests for Church weddings often “do not reflect a mature faith, nor an awareness of the ecclesial and sacramental significance of what is being requested”, and that in some cases “even a trace of predisposition to faith is lacking”. The cardinal said this helps explain “the high number of couples in crisis who choose to separate, unable to find the grace to save their marriage in the sacrament”. “At the pastoral level, it cannot be reduced to the simple transmission to the laity, in didactic and theoretical form, of what the Church teaches and requires regarding marriage,” he said. “Rather, it requires the ability to accompany those intending to marry on a path of experiential maturation, preparing them to welcome the grace of Christ, enabling them to live a Christian life.” Quoting the Pope, the cardinal said: “In the family, faith is transmitted together with life, from generation to generation,” and added that “since families struggle to transmit the faith and could be tempted to shirk this task, we must try to stand alongside them without replacing them”. He said the aim of the current reflection is to promote a form of priestly formation “more closely aligned with pastoral practice and capable of generating new Christian families in the faith”. The study day concluded with a call for continued discernment on how best to proclaim, protect and accompany the vocation to marriage in contemporary society, with an emphasis on forming “teachers of the faith and authentic spiritual fathers to foster Christian families”.