Speaker Pelosi challenges archbishop’s decision barring her from receiving Communion

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Tuesday questioned whether a San Francisco archbishop who said he would deny her Communion over abortion rights was using a double standard by allowing politicians who support the death penalty to receive the sacrament.

“I wonder about the death penalty, which I’m opposed to. So is the church, but they take no actions against people who may not share their view,” Pelosi said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We just have to be prayerful. We have to be respectful. I come from a largely pro-life, Italian American, Catholic family, so I respect people’s views about that. But I don’t respect us foisting it on to others.”

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco on Friday notified Pelosi that she would be denied Communion because of her vocal support for abortion.

“After numerous attempts to speak with her to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that the point has come in which I must make a public declaration that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiate her support for abortion ‘rights’ and confess and receive absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of Penance,” Cordileone said in a letter to members of his archdiocese. “I have accordingly sent her a Notification to this effect, which I have now made public.”

Cordileone last year called for Communion to be withheld from public figures who support abortion rights but did not mention Pelosi by name at the time.

In the MSNBC interview, Pelosi challenged the notion of imposing her personal views on abortion on others and highlighted Cordileone’s pronouncements on other issues, such as gay rights.

“We just have to be prayerful, we have to be respectful. I come from a largely pro-life Italian American Catholic family, so I respect people’s views about that, but I don’t respect us foisting it onto others,” she said. “Our archbishop has been vehemently against LGBTQ rights, too. In fact, he led the way in some of the initiatives — an initiative on the ballot in California. So, this decision taking us to privacy and precedent is very dangerous in the lives of so many of the American people and not consistent with the Gospel of Matthew.”

“This is not just about terminating a pregnancy. So the same people are against contraception, family planning, in vitro fertilization — it’s a blanket thing, and they use abortion as the frontman for it, while they try to undo so much,” Pelosi argued in the interview. “I think it’s very insulting to women to have their own decision hampered by politics. This should never have been politicized.”