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VAATICAN, March 20, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pro-abortion Catholics Vice President Joe Biden and House Leader Nancy Pelosi both received Holy Communion at the inauguration Mass of Pope Francis in the Vatican yesterday.  However, while the Pope did administer Communion to deacons assisting at the altar, he did not distribute Communion to any of the dignitaries present.

Pope Benedict XVI stressed throughout his pontificate and before it began that pro-abortion politicians should be denied Communion. 

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Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro, the head of the Rome office of Human Life International told LifeSiteNews that “While some Americans were perfectly entitled to received Communion, like Congressman Smith, as Cardinal Raymond Burke has said so eloquently, politicians who consider themselves Catholic but support abortion should absent themselves from Holy Communion.” 

US News and World Report quotes press pools at the inaugural Mass reporting Biden and Pelosi did receive Communion. And the Washington Times notes that Biden’s office has confirmed it. 

Vice President Biden was received in a short meeting by Pope Francis.  Monsignor Barreiro explained, “When you have diplomatic relations with a country you can’t refuse to receive them in a lineup, you can however refuse them Holy Communion.”

Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life said, according to the Times: “Vice President Biden and Nancy Pelosi should certainly not receive Communion, either at the papal installation or anywhere else. Communion means ‘union,’ and they are not in union with the church on the most fundamental moral issue of the right to life.”

HLI President Fr. Shenan Boquet told LifeSiteNews, “While we cannot know what is truly in someone’s heart, all too often political or other high-profile figures who profess to be members of the Catholic faith give rise to scandal when they publicly promote intrinsic evils such as abortion, euthanasia, the redefinition of marriage, and contraception—several of which have been championed by Vice President Biden and Rep. Pelosi throughout their political careers.

Fr. Boquet added: “As Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, taught in the 2007 ‘Aparecida Document’, the responsibility of legislators, heads of governments to not receive Holy Communion while engaged in ‘deeds or words against the commandments, particularly when abortion, euthanasia, and other grave crimes against life and family are encouraged’ is a very serious one. Both Mr. Biden and Mrs. Pelosi are in grave violation of this principle, as neither have so far publicly shown fidelity to the Church on these issues, and both have opposed the Church whenever her teachings conflicted with their anti-life and anti-family ideology. All members of the Catholic Church are called to defend life and family, but this responsibility weighs most heavily on Catholics who hold public office.”