U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no longer allowed to receive Holy Communion because of her position on abortion rights, the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco announced Friday in a letter to members of the archdiocese.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said that he had found “no pleasure whatsoever in fulfilling my pastoral duty here,” but he sees no other choice.
Cordileone, who has been the archbishop of San Francisco since 2012, said that he tried speaking with Pelosi about the issue, but she has ignored his requests to discuss her pro-choice positions.
“After numerous attempts to speak with her to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that the point has come in which I must make a public declaration that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion ‘rights’ and confesses and receives absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of Penance,” he wrote.
Pelosi, who often mentions her Catholic faith, is a long-time supporter of abortion rights.
Earlier this month, after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion suggested that the 1973 decision legalizing abortion nationwide would likely be overturned, Pelosi called on the Democratic party to fight for the right to abortion, and for voters to “activate our communities and make our voices heard.”
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The conservative archbishop said that “Speaker Pelosi’s position on abortion has become only more extreme over the years, especially in the last few months.”
“Just earlier this month she once again, as she has many times before, explicitly cited her Catholic faith while justifying abortion as a ‘choice,’ this time setting herself in direct opposition to Pope Francis,” whom he called “one of the world’s most vocal advocates of human dignity in every stage and condition of life.”
Francis, according to Cordileone, “as much as any pope in living memory, has repeatedly and vividly affirmed the Church’s clear and constant teaching that abortion is a grave moral evil.”
