House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) received Holy Communion at the Vatican on Wednesday, witnesses told The Associated Press (AP), despite her continued and public support for abortion.
During the Wednesday morning Mass commemorating the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, Pelosi sat in the diplomatic section of the basilica where she received Communion with other congregants, The AP reported. Before the Mass she met with Pope Francis and received a blessing, one Mass attendee told The AP.
Pope Francis himself did not distribute Communion, the publication reported, but Pelosi received Communion from another priest.
The Holy Father’s reticence on vocally pro-abortion Catholic politicians, including President Joe Biden, has sparked concerns and criticisms from conservative Catholics around the world.
The pope has repeatedly condemned abortion as evil.
In May, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco announced that after many unanswered requests to speak with Pelosi, he was ordering her to abstain from Communion over her abortion stances.
“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,” Cordileone informed Pelosi.
Shortly after Cordileone’s May warning, the California Democrat attended Mass at Holy Trinity parish in Georgetown where a live stream showed her receiving Communion.
Here’s a video from @holytrinitydc showing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi receiving communion from a Eucharistic minister -not the priest- at mass on Sunday. She’s wearing an orange blazer in the right line. pic.twitter.com/4WnChU7KGj
— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) May 24, 2022
Pelosi condemned the historic overturn of Roe v. Wade as an “outrageous and heart-wrenching” move fulfilling the Republican Party’s “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions,” per The AP. On Tuesday evening at a diplomatic reception at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, she referenced Catholicism.
“Faith is an important gift, not everyone has it but it is the path to so many other things,” she said, according to The AP.
To receive Holy Communion, which Catholics believe is the body of Jesus Christ, one must be in a state of grace, which means that an individual has gone to the Sacrament of Confession before Mass and confessed all serious or mortal sins, and one must have fasted for at least an hour.
The Catholic News Agency cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church in reporting that a mortal sin “destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God.” Examples of mortal sins are murder, adultery, pornography, theft, and missing Mass on Sunday.
The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is “a crime against human life,” “constitutes a grave offense,” and that a person who obtains an abortion is automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
Additionally, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has emphasized that Catholics in politics “have an obligation in conscience to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil and in sinning against the common good.”
Pelosi did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Wire.
Source: Dailywire
