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239 Catholic couples were able to celebrate their marriage in style in Indonesia, thanks to collaboration between the Diocese of Atambua and local authorities in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province.   The event was held under a huge tent in St Filomena Church in Mena, where Fr Kanis Oki and several priests concelebrated the nuptial Mass organised as part of the Jubilee of Mercy "to reiterate the beauty of marriage”.  Practical reasons brought about the mass wedding, most notably a desire to facilitate the issuance of marriage certificates, a notoriously painful process in Indonesia. 

A few months ago, Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa spoke publicly about the importance of marriage and birth certificates, something that many Indonesians fail to grasp. He noted that 85 per cent of all children in NTT, the country’s most Catholic province, do not have a birth certificate.  Some 36 million Indonesian children out of a total of 87 million do not have this document. 

In NTT, many adults also do not register their marriage because women, according to tradition, are required to provide a dowry (called bellis in the local language) to the groom's family. This is not the case in Java and other provinces.  However, the bellis is a financial burden for many people, and so couples opt out of the official marriage to avoid the payment. Their children however end up without a birth certificate, unable to attend state schools.

To solve the problem, Minister Parawansa contacted religious leaders in the province.  St Filomena’s pastor, Fr Bowe, said, "We received the full support of the government and dozens of NGOs, local and foreign. Mass weddings were carried out to help newlyweds get the papers required by the State."   (Source: AsiaNews)

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