Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi cannot take communion anymore because she advocates abortion rights, and publicly invokes her Catholic faith. This was stated by the Archbishop of San Francisco in a Friday letter.

In an open letter to Pelosi, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone stated that Pelosi’s position regarding abortion had become more extreme in recent months.

Pelosi’s Office did not respond immediately to our request for comment.

After the publication earlier in the month of a draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that the court would reject the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion across the country, the archbishop has taken the decision.

Cordileone stated that Pelosi hadn’t responded to Cordileone’s requests for a meeting in the three months since she promised to codify abortion protections into federal law, after conservative lawmakers had passed close-to-total bans on abortion at the state level.

According to the archbishop, he had sent Pelosi an April private letter warning her that he wouldn’t allow her communion if she didn’t publicly reject abortion rights and stop referring to Catholicism in public.

Cordileone highlighted Pelosi’s comments to the Seattle Times editorial boards this month. She cited her Catholic faith, support for abortion rights and then stated: “They said to me that Nancy Pelosi believes she knows more about the subject of having babies than the Pope. Yes. Is that stupid?

Cordileone explained that his action was purely pastoral in the letter he wrote to the faithful.

The archbishop said that “Speaker Pelosi will always be our sister in Christ” My admiration is due to her advocacy for care and support of the weak and vulnerable.