© Reuters. Pope Francis welcomes U.S. Speaker of the Home Nancy Pelosi as they meet on the Vatican, October 9, 2021. Vatican Media/Handout through REUTERS
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By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis met on Saturday with U.S. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who has come underneath criticism from some bishops in the US for her assist for abortion rights.
Their assembly came about a number of weeks earlier than Joe Biden is predicted to fulfill the pope whereas the U.S. president is in Rome for talks between leaders of the Group of 20 main economies.
Biden, the second Catholic U.S. president, has stated he’s personally against abortion however, as a politician, can’t impose his views. Pelosi, who has 5 youngsters, has stated she helps a lady’s proper to decide on.
Biden’s administration and Pelosi have urged judges to dam a brand new Texas regulation which bars abortions from six weeks, saying it’s unconstitutional. The ban was briefly reinstated on Friday by a conservative-leaning appeals court docket.
The Catholic Church teaches that human life begins in the meanwhile of conception and Biden and Pelosi have been criticised by conservative Catholic media and U.S. conservative bishops, a few of whom say neither needs to be allowed to obtain communion.
Final month the pope, requested concerning the U.S. communion debate, advised reporters abortion is “homicide”, even quickly after conception, however appeared to criticise U.S. Catholic bishops for coping with the problem in a political slightly than pastoral method.
“Communion will not be a prize for the right … communion is a present, the presence of Jesus and his Church,” the pope stated.
In June, a divided convention of U.S. Roman Catholic bishops voted to draft an announcement on communion that some bishops say ought to particularly admonish Catholic politicians, together with Biden. They take up the problem once more subsequent month.
The Vatican introduced Pelosi’s viewers with the pope in its every day bulletin however gave no particulars.
After Pelosi met former Pope Benedict in 2009, the Vatican stated he had advised her that legislators and different public figures ought to assist create “a simply system of legal guidelines able to defending human life in any respect levels of its improvement”.
The archbishop in Pelosi’s house metropolis of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, has stated public figures who assist abortion needs to be denied communion in his archdiocese and has urged Catholics to wish for Pelosi’s “conversion of coronary heart”.
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., has not tried to cease Biden, a daily church-goer, from receiving communion.
Biden’s assembly with the pope would be the first since his election though they’ve met a number of occasions earlier than, together with when he was vice-president to Barack Obama.
Pelosi is in Rome for a Parliamentary Audio system’ Summit forward of the G20 as nicely a gathering of parliamentary leaders earlier than of the U.N. Local weather Change Summit (COP20) subsequent month in Glasgow.
Francis advised the parliamentarians individually on Saturday that they had a decisive function to play in defending the atmosphere.
The Vatican introduced on Friday that the pope wouldn’t be going to Glasgow however that its delegation could be headed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state.
