After a decade-long battle with the Vatican and America’s most famous political dynasty, the divorced wife of Joseph Kennedy has secured a ruling that means that she is still married to him – at least in the eyes of the Church.

The Vatican confirmed that the annulment, granted in 1996 by the Boston Archdiocese on the ground that Mr Kennedy lacked the “psychological capacity” to marry, had been reversed on appeal from his former wife.

Sheila Rauch Kennedy alleged that it was only the family’s influence within the Roman Catholic Church that had made it possible for the former congressman – the eldest son of Bobby Kennedy and once seen as a rising star of politics – to invalidate the marriage.

Annulments, which allow Catholics to remarry in church and go to Communion, are usually granted only in exceptional circumstances, such as a refusal by a husband or wife to have children. Mr Kennedy married Sheila Rauch in 1979 and they stayed together, bringing up twin boys, for 12 years.

In 1997 Ms Rauch Kennedy published Shattered Faith, a memoir in which she portrayed her former husband as a hot-tempered bully who browbeat her when she refused to agree to an annulment of their marriage.

Within months Mr Kennedy had withdrawn from the race to become Massachusetts governor, and after the death of his brother Michael, in a 1998 skiing accident, he abandoned politics by quitting his safe seat in Congress.

“When you try to defend your marriage, the army that comes after you is pretty brutal,” Ms Rauch Kennedy said in an interview with The Boston Globe. “You’re accused of being a vindictive ex-wife, an alcoholic bigot, an idiot.

“The process was very dishonest and it was a process in which I was being bullied. But I was very lucky. I had help from outside of the archdiocese. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known about appealing to Rome and how to do it.”

She said that the annulment was a “cop-out” by trying to suggest that the marriage was never blessed. “To put it off on God I didn’t feel was valid,” she added. “I felt we had a very good marriage in the beginning. The children were conceived and born in that marriage, and for a number of years, before it unravelled, it worked.”

The couple were granted a civil divorce in 1991, and Mr Kennedy later remarried his former congressional aide, Beth Kelly. He runs Citizens Energy Corporation, an organisation that offers low-cost housing and fuel to the poor.

He has previously described how he had wanted to lose the stigma of divorce. “Getting an annulment is the only way, the only way, that I can go to Communion with my children and my wife, and that is important to me,” he said.

Reasons for an annulment

Lack of sufficient use of reason You did not know what was happening

Psychic-natured incapacity to assume marital obligations A psychological condition prevented you from fulfilling marriage duties

Error concerning the person You married the wrong person by accident

Malicious deception to obtain consent One partner lied to get the other to marry

Wilful exclusion of children One partner refused to have children

Wilful exclusion of marital permanence One partner never intended the relationship to last a lifetime

Future condition Marriage was dependent upon an event happening in the future

Past or present condition Marriage dependent on event having happened or which turned out not to be so

Lack of commitment One partner had not realised that marriage was an exclusive relationship

Dignity of marriage One partner did not believe in the religious significance of marriage

Sources: Vatican; East Lewis County Catholic Community

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