Photo Courtesy of Metropolitan Tribunal

SMYRNA—Some 130 women and men now serve as advocates for the Archdiocese of Atlanta Metropolitan Tribunal helping parishioners and others seeking a marriage annulment in the church’s court system.

While tribunal work can seem legal and procedural, advocates see a deeply human side. 

After meeting a client for the first time, Chris Oppermann, 34, said he takes his role as his client’s “cheerleader” seriously.  

“It really takes a beautiful degree of faith and a love for the church to even want to do this.” 

Lisette Reyes said the position requires empathy. Reyes, a New Yorker with family roots in the Dominican Republic, has worked with more than 50 applicants since becoming an advocate in 2019. 

Advocates have “to go in with an open mind, an open heart,” she said. 

Tribunal advocate program grows  

In the church court system, an advocate educates clients about understanding the five pillars of a Catholic marriage and prepares with them a case for why they believe their marriage is invalid. 

In 2019, the tribunal commissioned its first class of nearly 65 advocates. Now, the number has nearly doubled as women, men and deacons serve as advocates in more than 60 parishes in the Archdiocese of Atlanta. 

On Jan. 25, 14 new advocates took the oath of office. Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv., commissioned them to serve in the Metropolitan Tribunal in the Archdiocese of Atlanta. 

Among them is Lien Hoa Nguyen, 44, who stepped forward at her parish, Holy Vietnamese Martyrs Church, Norcross. She joined a handful of other advocates already working in the community.  

A trained oncology pharmacist, Nguyen is drawn to aiding people in their time of need. She was attracted to the structured and analytical approach of the tribunal process, which she finds less ambiguous than other areas of the church. 

“This area of help is very needed, first of all because not a lot of people can handle the work, but also to me, personally it’s a little bit less gray,” she said.  

Nguyen said her goal is to help people understand what happened in the past, acknowledge it and then move forward so they can be “living according to the laws of God.” 

Familiar faces offering support  

The judicial vicar, Father Dan Ketter, oversees the tribunal. 

The advocate program continues to evolve, striving to better equip advocates with both knowledge and real-world practice. The volunteers learn the theory and theology of the church’s marriage law. Ketter envisions training to bridge the gap between theory and its practical application, teaching best practices for soliciting client information and then applying their knowledge of the law to prepare the best petition. 

A success of the advocate program is that it puts volunteers closer to the people they serve, since they are familiar faces in parishes. He said clients can feel more comfortable talking with volunteers who they see around the church than with strangers in an unfamiliar office. 

At the same time, the program needs people willing to serve as advocates from rural areas of the archdiocese. Those interested in the service tend to center around the Atlanta area, but there are needs on the edges of the archdiocese, he said. People with foreign language skills continue to be needed. 

The program began to relieve the overwhelmed staff advocates. Tribunal officials worried that marriage annulment applications would take up to two years to resolve. Today, volunteers now handle the caseload previously managed by staff advocates. And the goal remains for petitions to be finalized in a year, he said. 

Delays have consequences for believers. Those who have civilly remarried may not be able to receive Communion, while others may not be able to be received into the church. 

The training for the program involves seven phases, including two in-person trainings. They cover courses on canon law, the history of marriage, grounds for nullity and procedural law. Each advocate is assigned a professional canonist as mentor early in the training to lean on for advice and guidance.  

Service toward healing 

Oppermann, an executive at a small healthcare company, serves as an advocate at Holy Spirit Church in Atlanta, while worshiping at St. Catherine of Siena in Kennesaw. Fluent in English and Spanish, he felt called to this work, knowing he would accompany people during a vulnerable time. 

His goal is to “help people heal” from an unsuccessful marriage, even when the process requires revisiting painful memories. He is also drawn to the intellectual challenge, finding canon law and its application fascinating. He’s worked with some 40 clients. He never promises a guarantee to a potential client, but Oppermann said he promises he’ll walk beside the person through the journey.  

Reyes, 56, also started in 2019 only expecting to handle a few cases and help people spiritually as they desire to participate in church life. She has assisted between 50 to 70 petitions, largely members of the Spanish-speaking community. 

The new advocates will learn how much listening is required because every person sitting in front of them has a unique life story, she said, while few people completely understand the church’s belief about marriage. 

“You feel sometimes brokenhearted for them,” she said about her clients. Many married either when they were young or for cultural reasons, so they want to return to serving in the church by seeking an annulment, she said. 

Reyes sets aside two hours at the first meeting to ensure she can be the voice of her client during the process. Her goal is to work with women and men “to get back to where they need to be, as far as spiritually.”