RACHEL A.G. REYES
Catholic Europe has some of the highest divorce rates in the world. In Spain, 61 percent of all marriages end in divorce. In Portugal it is 68 percent and in Belgium the figure is 71 percent. While these figures may point toward the social acceptability of divorce in these papal countries, to think that divorce is cheap, easy, and treated as trivial in Europe would be wrong. As one divorce lawyer put it, divorce is characterized by “the emotional pain of separation, incomprehension about the legal process, and conflict with regard to the division of property and assets.”