US House Speaker Pelosi receives communion in Vatican

Pope Francis greets Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, before celebrating a Mass on Wednesday at the Vatican.

The sacrament has become a political issue with conservative American bishops like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's own priest, who has said he will deny her the sacrament until she stops publicly supporting abortion rights.

ROME - US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an avid defender of abortion rights, met privately with Pope Francis on Wednesday and received communion from a priest during a papal mass at St. Peter's Basilica, according to an attendee. Ms. Pelosi, who has denounced the Supreme Court decision to strip constitutional protections for abortion as outrageous and heart-wrenching, sat in a V.I. P. diplomatic section of the basilica received a blessing from Francis in private before the morning mass celebrating the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul. She later lined up to receive communion from a priest. The Vatican did not return a request for confirmation of the meeting, but released a picture of Ms. Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, greeting Francis on the side of the basilica.

Pope Francis has called abortion evil and murderous, upheld the church's absolute opposition to it, and during the mass on Wednesday he said church leaders must continue to care for human life. Francis has strongly opposed the politicization of church sacraments, and told newly consecrated archbishops on Wednesday to be inclusive and not to be pinned to some of our fruitless debates. He said, So many times we become a church with open doors, but only to send people away, to condemn them. Francis issued a new apostolic letter about church liturgy, in which he emphasized that the celebration of Mass belongs to the totality of the faithful united in Christ. The liturgy does not say I but we, Francis wrote, and any limitation on the breadth of this we are always demonic. Francis has said in the past that I have never refused the Eucharist to anyone, and preached that communion is not the reward of saints but the bread of sinners. The Vatican has urged conservative bishops in the United States not to reduce the sacrament to a political issue after several floated the idea last year of denying communion to President Biden and other Catholic leaders who support abortion rights. Ms. Pelosi's hometown priest, the conservative Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, had said he would deny her the sacrament until she stops publicly supporting abortion rights.

The divide between the conservative American bishops and Pope Francis, who has explicitly identified the United States as the source of opposition to his pontificate, has resulted in a rare open rift in the church. Cardinal Luis Ladaria, a top doctrinal official, wrote a letter to the American bishops last year warning that moving ahead on an effort to deny communion to Catholic supporters of abortion rights could become a source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate and larger church in the United States.