The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, received communion during the mass presided in part by Pope Francis this morning in St. Peter's Basilica.
And this despite the fact that in May the Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, the native diocese of Pelosi, had forbidden her to receive communion in the archdiocese for her explicit support for abortion.
Pelosi, who is currently in Rome for a family vacation, participated in the liturgy for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul in the Vatican Basilica and according to sources present there who reported it to the Crux site she received the Eucharist.
Pelosi did not receive the host from the Pope himself - who, moreover, due to the pain in his knee, presided only the first part of the Mass and the liturgy of the word, then leaving the guide of the Eucharistic liturgy to Cardinal Dean Giovanni Maria Re -, but by one of the priests of the Basilica, whose nationality is unknown.
It is also unclear whether the priest knew who he was.
Archbishop Cordileone had announced his decision to prevent the speaker of the US Chamber from receiving Communion with a letter to the faithful on May 20: "After numerous attempts to speak with her to help her understand the serious evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing and the danger to her soul that she is risking, I have determined that the point has come where I must declare that she is not admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiates her support for the 'rights' of 'abortion and confess and receive absolution for his collaboration in this evil in the sacrament of penance ".
