A hard Raid at “Sham Marriages” by the UK Church

The Church of England is to issue new regulation to clergy in an effort to decrease the number of sham marriages. Today onward every couple will have to put forward a request for a license if either the bride or groom is from a non-European country.

Members of the clergy are also being advised to tell any doubts they have that the marriage is not real. During the last nine months, at least 155 people have been detained in the UK as a result of inquiries into both church and formal procedure. The new direction recommends clergy not to publish banns - where a couple's aim to marry is recited in church - for marriages relating a man or a woman from a non-European country. 

Instead, it says couples should apply for an "ordinary license", which involves the swearing of affidavits and classes. The guidance released by the House of Bishops, which is one of the three houses in the General Synod has UK Border Agency accord. It says if a member of the clergy is not contented that the marriage is authentic, he or she must make that obvious to the person liability for issuing the license. Clergy should "instantly" report a couple to diocesan authorized officers if they persist on having banns read rather than applying for an ordinary license under the guidance.

The Church said clergy who deny conducting a wedding as an effect of the guidance would not be considered at fault of misconduct. Vicars have also been advised to call the police immediately should they think are being endangered to carry out a marriage. The Right Reverend John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, said:

The House of Bishops is patent that the office of auspicious wedding must not be distorted by those who have no objective of constricting a real marriage. The aim of this advises and path from the bishops to the clergy and to those responsible for the endorsement of common licenses is, therefore, to prevent the contracting of sham marriages in the Church of England," he said.

Damian Green, Immigration minister, who has supported the guidance, said the UK Border Agency already worked "very closely" with the Church to find out and interrupt doubtful sham weddings but the new guidance was "an additional step in the right path".

Illicit groups backed the sham weddings had in the past broken the simplicity with which the Church would marry people, he said. But the new guidance made it essential for vicars for taking action, and ended easily utilizable "excuses", he added.

Alex Brown, 61, a holy man was imprisoned for four years for his part in a fake marriage scam which helped a large numbers of unlawful immigrants stay in Britain. He harmed his position to marry hundreds of African men to Eastern European women at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

A spokesman of UK Church said no at least a "handful" of clergy were presently suspended pending police investigations into so-called fake marriages. "All the 155 arrests revealed by the immigration minister are of couples and their catalysts," he said.