House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has no Catholic right to be granted Communion, said the leading cardinal of the highest court at the Vatican.
Mrs. Pelosi should be denied Communion until she changes her advocacy views on abortion, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke said, in an interview with The Wanderer reported by the Western Center for Journalism.
That’s canon law, not opinion, he said. Canon 915 states that Catholics who are stubbornly contrary “in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
And Cardinal Burke said Mrs. Pelosi fits the definition.
“Certainly this is a case when Canon 915 must be applied,” he said, the Western Center for Journalism reported. “This is a person who obstinately, after repeated admonitions, persists in a grave sin — cooperating with the crime of procured abortion — and still professes to be a devout Catholic.”
The cardinal also said that Mrs. Pelosi is a perfect example of Catholics who separate their faith from day-to-day living.
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“This is a prime example of what Blessed John Paul II referred to as the situation of Catholics who have divorced their faith from their public life and therefore are not serving their brothers and sisters in the way that they must — in safeguarding and promoting the life of the innocent and defenseless unborn, in safeguarding and promoting the integrity of marriage and the family,” he said.
The cardinal, an American, is the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome, Life News reported.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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