The Instruction Dignitas Connubii is the result of the lengthy endeavour that the Dicasteries of the Holy See embarked on, at the Holy Father John Paul II's explicit request, from 1996 to 2005: in addition to the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura and the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota.
The purpose of the Instruction is to offer the ministers of justice who work in ecclesiastical tribunals a practical Document, a sort of vademecum that will serve as an easy guide to enable them to handle their work better in canonical processes of matrimonial nullity.