The leader of the Democrats in the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, must be refused Catholic communion because of her defense of the right to abortion, the archbishop of San Francisco ruled on Friday in a letter made public.
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“You don’t have to show up for [recevoir] Holy Communion and, should this happen, you shall not be admitted to Holy Communion, until you publicly repudiate your defense of the legitimacy of abortion, and confess and receive absolution for this grave sin,” wrote US Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone in his letter dated Thursday to the senior Democratic official.
Invoking the position of the Church on the question of abortion, Ms.gr Cordileone said in his letter that he had already threatened Nancy Pelosi, California’s elected official for decades, with this measure in April 2022 if she did not publicly disavow “abortion rights”.
The Archbishop’s announcement comes as the right to abortion in the United States is threatened by the Supreme Court which, according to a document revealed by Politicoseems ready to go back, 50 years after its historic decision to protect abortion.
Shortly after the leak of the document in early May, Nancy Pelosi and the leader of the Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer, had estimated in a joint press release that the possible decision of the Supreme Court would constitute “an abomination”.
They had both warned: “If this information is correct, the Supreme Court is ready to impose the strongest restriction of rights in fifty years – not just on women, but on all Americans”.
Asked by AFP, the services of Nancy Pelosi were not able to respond immediately.
Even if it is supported by a majority of the population, according to recent polls, the right to abortion has been a very divisive social issue in the United States since the historic “Roe v. Wade” of January 1973, which protects the right of American women to terminate their pregnancies.
The Archbishop also asks “all the faithful of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to pray for all our elected officials, especially Catholic elected officials” who promote abortion rights, so that they change their minds “about this matter of the greatest gravity”.