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Pro-Abortion Catholic Politicians Targeted by Canonical Lawsuit

WASHINGTON, January 21, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A canon lawyer who filed a heresy charge with the Vatican against then presidential nominee Senator John F. Kerry last summer has expanded his suit to include a number of other pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

Marc Balestrieri, in an unprecedented class-action ecclesiastical lawsuit, filed a “Dual-Denunciation for Heresy and Complaint for Reparation of Harm” against Senator John F. Kerry for his support of a civil right to choose abortion. Balestrieri announced Thursday that he has added Senators Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin, Susan Collins, and former New York Governor Mario Cuomo to the suit.

Balestrieri argues that Kerry and other Catholic pro-abortion politicians, because they support abortion rights, are guilty of the "Right-to-Murder" Heresy condemned by Pope John Paul II in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae of 1995. Automatic Excommunication is the penalty incurred for this offense.

Father Basil Cole, a Washington-based Dominican priest asked by the Vatican’s undersecretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to respond to Balestrieri’s suit, indicated that Catholic politicians who advocate abortion are “automatically excommunicated.”

This pronouncement was understood by Balestrieri to indicate Vatican support for his lawsuit against Kerry. However, Vatican authorities later fended off any suggestion of involvement in Balestrieri’s lawsuit.

De Fides website
http://www.defide.com/

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Presidential Candidate John Kerry charged in Catholic Court for Abortion Stand
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jul/04070502.html
Sen. John Kerry "Excommunicated," According To Vatican Response
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/oct/04101801.html
Vatican Has Not Denied Automatic Excommunication of John Kerry
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/oct/041019a.html

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