cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they 'take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples. Two articles of the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church address the reception of the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion by divorced persons who are civilly remarried. Article 1650 states, "they cannot receive Eucharistic Communion as long as this situation persists." Article 1650 continues, "Reconciliation through the sacrament of Penance can be granted only to those who have repented for having violated the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence". Article 2390 states that outside of marriage, the sexual act "constitutes a grave sin and excludes one from sacramental communion". In 1993 German bishops Walter Kasper, Karl Lehmann, and Oskar Saier had a letter read in the churches of their dioceses saying this question of Communion for divorced Catholics "in complex, individual cases" needed to be addressed. These bishops are said to have supported Cardinal Bergoglio for the papacy in 2005. When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected the group disbanded, but when Bergoglio was elected in 2013 Kasper returned to prominence on this issue. In 1994, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a letter which states that divorced and civilly remarried persons cannot receive the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion unless, where they cannot separate due to serious reasons, such as the upbringing of children, "they 'take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples. The letter also states that even if a divorced person is subjectively certain in conscience that their previous marriage had never been valid, this determination can only be made by a competent ecclesiastical tribunal. In his encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Pope John Paul II states: "those who 'obstinately persist in manifest grave sin' are not to be admitted to Eucharistic communion". In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI released the apostolic exhortation Sacramentum caritatis. Benedict XVI "confirmed the Church's practice, based on Sacred Scripture (cf. Mk 10:2- 12), of not admitting the divorced and remarried to the sacraments, since their state and their condition of life objectively contradict the loving union of Christ and the Church signified and made present in the Eucharist." With regard to divorced persons living in new unions,