Last Updated on May 20, 2022
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone announced on Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will not be permitted to receive Holy Communion due to her “extreme” abortion views. House and Senate Democrats have been voting in favor of a bill that would legalize abortion until birth.
“After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, an the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion,” wrote Archbishop Cordileone in a tweet.
After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, an the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion. https://t.co/l7M85CyG86
— Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone (@ArchCordileone) May 20, 2022
In a letter formally announcing the decision, Cordileone said he wrote to Pelosi on April 7 and told her she must publicly disavow her pro-abortion stance “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.”
Cordileone said he had not heard from Pelosi since sending the letter, which prompted the decision.
“Therefore, in light of my responsibility as the Archbishop of San Francisco to be ‘concerned for all the Christian faithful entrusted to [my] care” (Code of Canon Law, can. 383, §1), by means of this communication I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.”
Archbishop Cordileone has called for President Biden and other self-styled Catholic politicians to be barred from Holy Communion over their pro-abortion views. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly bans both the practice abortion and assisting with one, saying “since the first century, the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion….”
“This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law,” the catechism says.
While church teachings are clear, each bishop has authority in his own diocese on this matter. The archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, has stated that Biden is welcome to receive the sacrament there.
