First, there is "Petrine privilege, also known as the privilege of the faith or favour of the faith, is a ground recognised in Catholic canon law allowing for dissolution by the Pope of a valid natural marriage between a baptised and a non-baptised person, for the sake of the salvation of the soul of someone who is thus enabled to marry in the Church." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrine_privilege
Can. 1143 §1. A marriage entered into by two non-baptized persons is dissolved by means of the pauline privilege in favor of the faith of the party who has received baptism by the very fact that a new marriage is contracted by the same party, provided that the non-baptized party departs. - http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P44.HTM
Then we have history as relates to clerics:
THE FIRST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF NICEA, A.D. 325: Whatever presbyter or deacon shall put away his wife without the offence of fornication, or for any other cause of which we have spoken above, and shall east her out of doors . . . such a person shall be east out of the clergy, if he were a clergyman; if a layman he shall be forbidden the communion of the faithful.. . . But if that woman[untruly charged by her husband with adultery], that is to say his wife, spurns his society on account of the injury he has done her and the charge he has brought against her, of which she is innocent, let her freely be put away and let a bill of repudiation be written for her, noting the false accusation which had been brought against her. And then if she should wish to marry some other faithful man, it is right for he; to do so, nor does the Church forbid it; and the same permission extends as well to men as to women, since there is equal reason for it for each. SOURCE: Henry R. Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church CANON LXVI. Vol XIV of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, edd. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, (repr. Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1988): https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/nicea1.txt
Even in the tenth century most rural priests had wives, and many urban clergy were also married, which presented a problem, a primary one being economic. A consequence which relates to divorce, the provincial council at Bourges in 1031 decreed that priests should separate from their wives, instead of attempting to cohabit chastely...The councils of Rome in 1049, 1050, and 1059 once again forbade clerics in major orders from having sexual relations with their wives and decreed that clerics dismiss any women they kept in their houses (including their wives) [which legislation had force under the code of laws known as "Las Siete Partidas,"drawn up by Alfonso the Wise]...
Similar legislation emerged from synods and councils for the next fifty year s, and in 1123, the council known as Lateran I prohibited clerical marriage and concubinage, decl aring that ordination to a major order (subdiaconate, diaconate, and priesthood) created an impediment to marriage. Clerics in major orders could no longer marry; existing clerical marriages were stripped of their legal status. Lateran II, in 1139, repeated these injunctions and made provisions for enforcement: clerical marriages would be considered invalid, both priests and their wives were to perform penance, and married clergy who resisted were to be deprived of both their clerical offices and their benefices.
The Second Lateran Council also forbade parishioners from attending a mass celebrated by an unchaste priest. 9 Together, the first and second Lateran councils finally and irrevocably decreed marriage a canonical crime for clerics in major orders; women who had married priests were denounced as concubines; children of priests were declared illegitimate. Lateran III (1179) reiterated the pronouncement that clerics who lived with women would be deprived of their benefices, and by the end of the twelfth century, marriage was an impediment to clerical orders. The change was not an easy one; while Peter Damian and other clerics supported the reforms, many resisted – sometimes violently. The struggle to enforce clerical celibacy had begun. 10...
[describing the findings of Catholic Henry C. Lea, "History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church"] clerical marriage was widespread throughout Europe at beginning of the eleventh century, clerical dynasties were ubiquitous, and “the standard of morality was extremely low... the clergy scarcely distinguishable from the laity in purity of life or devotion to their sacred calling.” 12 (Janelle Werner, “JUST AS THE PRIESTS HAVE THEIR WIVES”: PRIESTS AND CONCUBINES IN ENGLAND, 1375-1549, pp. 36-39: https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/indexablecontent/uuid:3b4c2b8e-f983-4220-9a6f-7fada717870a)
And as divorce is linked to the development of clerical celibacy, I think this information warrants including:
While many thousands of church women were driven out to the roads, a conclave of Italian bishops in 1076 tried to excommunicate Pope Gregory for the crime of destroying families.[xxxiii] Sigebert of Gembloux wrote, “Many have seen in the ban on attending mass of a married priest an open contradiction to the teaching of the fathers. This has led to such a great scandal that the church has never been split by a greater schism.”[xxxiv] Again Gregory fired the protesting clerics. In real concern, the Eastern Church Patriarch Petros of Antioch suggested that the Pope must have lost record of the old Council of Nicea ruling on clerical marriage from 325, possibly due to general destruction of records when the Goths or Vandals sacked Rome.[xxxv] That ruling from Nicea read in part, “Whatever presbyter or deacon shall put away his wife without the offense of fornication … and shall cast her out of doors … such a person shall be cast out of the clergy …”[xxxvi]
Many priests grew violent to defend their families. In the Paris Synod of 1074, Abbot Galter of Saint Martin demanded the flock follow its shepherd in celibacy. A mob of outraged priests beat him, spit on him, and threw him in the street. In the same year Archbishop John of Rouen threatened to excommunicate protesting priests, and had to flee for his life under a hail of stones. In furious debate, the celibate party denounced its opponents as fornicators trying to prostitute the church. Married priests hurled back accusations that their foes were sodomites, whose obvious preference for homosexuality made them hate married families.[xxxvii] For decades church synods regularly broke into fistfights, with monks and priests smashing each other’s faces. In 1233, protesters murdered papal legate Conrad of Marburg, who was touring Germany partly to enforce chastity.[xxxviii] In England, furious priests locked their churches, hid their families, and tried to keep them in secret.[xxxix]
As many clerical couples still clung to each other, the hierarchy applied stronger measures. In 1089, Pope Urban II ruled that if a priest did not dispose of his wife, the local prince could enslave the woman... - https://newtopiamagazine.wordpress.com/2012/10/15/how-the-church-lost-its-wives
In France the efforts of reform made by the predecessors of Gregory had little effect. A Paris synod of 1074 declared Gregory's decrees unbearable and unreasonable. At a stormy synod at Poitiers, in 1078, his legate obtained the adoption of a canon which threatened with excommunication all who should listen to mass by a priest whom they knew to be guilty of simony or concubinage. But the bishops were unable to carry out the canon without the aid of the secular arm. The Norman clergy in 1072 drove the archbishop of Rouen from a council with a shower of stones. William the Conqueror came to his aid in 1080 at a synod of Lillebonne, which forbade ordained persons to keep women in their houses. But clerical marriages continued, the nuptials were made public, and male children succeeded to benefices by a recognized right of primogeniture. William the Conqueror, who assisted the hopeless reform in Normandy, prevented it in his subject province of Britanny, where the clergy, as described by Pascal II, in the early part of the twelfth century, were setting the canons at defiance and indulging in enormities hateful to God and man (Primogeniture is the right of the firstborn to the inheritance—H.V.).
At last, the Gregorian enforcement of sacerdotal celibacy triumphed in the whole Roman Church, but at the fearful sacrifice of sacerdotal chastity. The hierarchical aim was attained, but not the angelic purity of the priesthood. The private morals of the priest were sacrificed to hierarchical ambition. Concubinage and licentiousness took the place of holy matrimony. The acts of councils abound in complaints of clerical immorality and the vices of unchastity and drunkenness. "The records of the Middle Ages are full of the evidences that indiscriminate license of the worst kind prevailed throughout every rank of the hierarchy." The corruption again reached the papacy, especially in the fifteenth century. John XXIII and Alexander VI rivaled in wickedness and lewdness the worst popes of the tenth and eleventh centuries. - https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/articles/church-and-sacraments-gregory-and-papacy-continued
More by God's grace.
So much for the Catholic church being champions of families and marriage.