U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is making international headlines after receiving communion in the Vatican on Wednesday. She and husband Paul met with Pope Francis shortly before the papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, according to the Daily Mail. They sat in a VIP section during the service, and received communion with other attendees.
The event is newsworthy because Pelosi is under an injunction from the archbishop of her home diocese against receiving the Eucharist until she publicly repudiates her support of abortion. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco recently banned the California Democrat from the sacrament, saying that she had repeatedly rebuffed his attempts to discuss her “advocacy for abortion ‘rights.’”
In his official notification dated May 19, he quoted a Catholic Church document from the Second Vatican Council that calls abortion and infanticide “unspeakable crimes,” and noted that “His Holiness, Pope Francis, in keeping with his predecessors, has likewise been quite clear and emphatic in teaching on the dignity of human life in the womb.”
Wednesday, however, the Vatican ignored its own clergyman’s public injunction and administered communion to Pelosi. The Holy See also snubbed Church law, quoted by Cordileone, that Catholics who promote abortion “are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
Catholics believe that the sacrament of Holy Eucharist contains the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. They consider it a grave sin for a Catholic to receive communion without first confessing his serious sins to a priest in the sacrament of penance. They point to a verse in the Christian Bible written by Saint Paul the Apostle: “Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27).
In Pelosi’s case, the archbishop has added to her obligation to confess privately; he has enjoined her to publicly retract support for abortion, because of the “most serious scandal” she has caused by it. He also ordered her to stop publicly referring to her Catholic faith as justifying her position.
Far from an open and honest refutation, the House speaker declared her disgust of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last Friday that removed federal protections for abortion by overturning the landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade. In response, Pelosi spat:
Today the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved their dark, extreme goal of ripping away a woman’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions….
In the Congress, be aware of this, the Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have a majority in the Congress to do that, but that’s their goal….
Such a contradiction, yesterday to say the states cannot make laws governing the Constitutional right to bear arms, and today, they’re saying the exact reverse: that the states can overturn a Constitutional right — for 50 years a Constitutional right — for a woman having the right to choose. The hypocrisy is raging, but the harm is endless.
What this means to women is such an insult. It’s a slap in the face to women about using their own judgment, to make their own decisions about their reproductive freedom.
Pelosi’s official residence is in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, and since 2012 Cordileone has been archbishop of the diocese in which she lives. He has come under fire from some Catholics in his jurisdiction for his staunch opposition to abortion, sodomitical unions, and sex outside of marriage.
Cordileone was appointed to the archdiocese by Pope Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. Prior to his pontificate, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote to the U.S. bishops in 2004 with directions on dealing with pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Cordileone also quoted this in his letter to Pelosi:
… when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist. When “these precautionary measures have not had their effect…,” and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, “the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it.”
Pelosi was in Rome to meet with Italian President Sergio Mattarella. They discussed the Deep State agenda of “strengthening NATO and the G7” to “advance security, enhance prosperity and defend Democracy in Ukraine — for our nations and in the world.”
