(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.
Citing a section of the Book of Ezekiel where God calls upon the prophet to “warn the just to avoid sin,” Cordileone said his “chief responsibility is the salvation of souls,” which he said could be accomplished by “honest dialogue, where each party listens openly and honestly, seeking to understand the other, and being honest with one’s own self.”
Cordileone asked Pelosi to allow dialogue to happen, writing “this kind of dialogue can dispel misperceptions and melt away hostilities, and build new bonds of friendship.”
“I ask this not only to dialogue in areas of disagreement, such as if and when it can ever be morally permissible to kill innocent human life, but also in other critical areas where our views on behalf of human life and dignity are aligned, especially threats to religious liberty internationally and the plight of immigrants domestically,” Cordileone wrote. “This should not be a problem, as Catholics are not afraid of the truth,” he finished.
Pelosi’s office did not respond to a request for further comment.
After the second installment of the interview was released, Peter Marlow, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, told RNS, “There has been correspondence with the Vatican, but the Vatican indicates that it is to be held as strictly confidential.”
Pelosi, who served as House speaker from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, spoke in the interview about her clashes with Catholic bishops over the years, including over abortion and over the Affordable Care Act. She also described her anger toward New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan for laughing at then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s jokes at the Al Smith Dinner.
“My Catholic faith is, Christ is my savior. It has nothing to do with the bishops,” she said.
In her interview with NCR, Pelosi also took the opportunity to criticize Pope Francis’ agreement to allow the Chinese government to weigh in on the appointment of bishops in the country.
“Why should the Chinese government be having a say in the appointment of bishops?” the speaker emerita asked. “We have, for decades, seen the suffering of Catholics in China,” she told NCR.
Among many U.S. politicians critical of China, Pelosi has stood out for her deep suspicion of the government and for her support for Taiwan, which is self-governing despite being claimed by China as a territory.
While acknowledging her status as an NCR reader, Pelosi seemed to quibble with exit poll results that show Catholics had dropped in their support for Democrats in the latest election, saying, “I saw the National Catholic Reporter saying that Catholics walked away from that,” before adding, “The plural of anecdote is not data.”
The National Catholic Reporter, a newspaper founded during the Second Vatican Council that leans left politically and religiously, said it scored the interview with Pelosi after reporter Camillo Barone spent three months contacting her office weekly asking for the appointment.
Pulitzer Prize-winning executive editor James Grimaldi called the interview “the result of the sheer persistence of a sharp and resourceful reporter,” noting the rarity of the outlet landing an interview with such a prominent politician.
