(RNS) — House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi wants the Vatican to overturn her archbishop’s decision to ban her from taking Communion.
The Democratic politician told the National Catholic Reporter, in the second installment of an interview published Thursday (Dec. 12), that she had requested the Vatican review San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s decision to prohibit her from receiving Communion due to her support for abortion rights and that the case was still pending.
Pelosi, 84, said she’s been to Catholic churches all over the country and has “never been denied” Communion, declining to name the priests in San Francisco who, in giving her Communion, would have disobeyed their archbishop’s order.
In early April 2022, Cordileone had warned Pelosi, in her second stint as House speaker at the time, that if she did not publicly repudiate her advocacy for abortion rights, he would bar her from Communion, a threat he followed through on about six weeks later. Cordileone’s actions were part of a broader push from the most conservative bishops to exact ecclesial consequences on Catholic politicians who showed political support for abortion rights.
On Tuesday, hours after NCR published its first installment of the interview, in which Pelosi said she had received Communion despite the prohibition, Cordileone issued a statement calling for Pelosi to reverse her abortion stance and an opportunity to dialogue with the politician.
“I would like to renew my request for prayers for the Speaker’s conversion on the issue of human life in the womb, that it be consistent with the respect for human dignity she displays in so many other contexts,” the archbishop wrote.
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