- The Archbishop of San Francisco said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi should be denied communion.
- Salvatore Cordileone said Pelosi should be denied communion until she repudiates her pro-choice views.
- Cordileone's actions could renew debate within the church over how to treat pro-abortion lawmakers.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said on Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be denied holy communion until she repudiates her pro-abortion views and her efforts to protect a federal right to an abortion.
"As you have not publically repudiated your position on abortion, and continue to refer to your Catholic faith in justifying your position and to receive Holy Communion, that time has now come," Cordileone wrote in a public notification laying out the reasons that Pelosi will be denied the sacrament.
Pelosi, who like President Joe Biden often references her Catholic faith, has helped marshall her party's efforts to enshrine a right to an abortion in federal law. The Democratic Party's push for abortion rights has received renewed vigor in the wake of a leaked draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Cordileone's action will almost certainly renew the debate over whether Catholic public officials should receive communion. Pope Francis has repeatedly reiterated the church's strong anti-abortion beliefs, but he has also sought to tamp down the roiling debate over how priests should treat officials like Pelosi and Biden.
"I have never refused the eucharist to anyone," Francis told reporters last September. The eucharist is a reference to the Catholic belief that through transubstantiation the blood and wine used during communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
At the time, Francis added a final plea for bishops to be faith leaders, not political figures.
"What must the pastor do?" he asked. "Be a pastor, don't go condemning. Be a pastor, because he is a pastor also for the excommunicated."
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops approved guidance last November that emphasized that bishops have a "special responsibility" to guide officials who advocate beliefs that are at odds with church policy. Ultimately, a local priest makes the final call on whether or not to grant someone communion. Priests are instructed not to deny communion to someone unless there is a serious reason.
Cordileone, in his letter, thanked Pelosi "for the time you have given me in the past to speak about these matters," but claimed that she had stopped responding to his questions since last September. A spokesperson for Pelosi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"That is why I communicated my concerns to you via letter on April 7, 2022, and informed you there that, should you not publically repudiate your advocacy for abortion 'rights' or else refrain from referring to your Catholic faith in public and receiving Holy Communion, I would have no choice but to make a declaration, in keeping with canon 915, that you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion," the archbishop writes.
Pelosi attended Trinity Washington University, a private- university that was once the nation's first Catholic liberal arts college for women. She frequently invokes her faith, including during a lengthy 2018 speech about the need to protect so-called Dreamers.