Annulment and Excommunication

7. To remedy this pernicious evil, We, with certain knowledge and after mature deliberation, declare all pacts between spouses for the dissolution of marriages to be null, invalid, and ineffectual, both now and for the future. We also annul those pacts which interfere with the appeals process, even if the pacts were approved by oath, and even if they were agreed upon before the publication of our most recent letter. So that no such pact may ever be considered valid and obligatory, We inflict the penalty of excommunication on anyone entering into a pact, from which no one can obtain absolution except through Us and Our successors, except at the hour of death. Besides We declare that any judge who may have dared to announce and further the pacts We mentioned before also incurs or will incur the same penalty of excommunication. We again confirm whatever is contained in the aforementioned last letter or in our Constitution, and especially all that concerns the procedure and order of the appeals from the unsuccessful defender of the marriage, and the sentence of the judge against the annulment. We bid your Brotherhood again to publish and disseminate the same letter and command that this be done as though it had been expressly inserted word for word in the present letter, just as We desire its tenor to be expressed and inserted in this present letter.