Overturning Nancy Pelosi’s Communion ban: It’s too late
for an appeal, expert says
Pope Francis meets
with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Vatican on Oct. 9, 2021. | Credit:
Vatican Media
Vatican City, Dec 13, 2024 / 16:35 pm
Despite former speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent statement that
she has appealed to the Vatican to overturn the Communion ban imposed on her
because of her position on abortion, such recourse is no longer likely to be
available to her, a canon law professor told CNA.
Pelosi would have needed to bring her case to Pope Francis
within 30 days of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s initial
imposition of the ban in 2022, said Father Stefan Mückl, an ecclesiastical
law professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in
Rome.
In an interview with the National Catholic Reporter
published this week, Pelosi said she had sought intervention at the Vatican to
get the ban overturned.
“My understanding, as long as Rome has the case, it hasn’t
been resolved,” Pelosi told the National Catholic Reporter. “I’ve never been
denied. I’ve been to Catholic churches all over the country, and I’ve
never been denied.”
It is not clear when Pelosi appealed to the Vatican. The
National Catholic Reporter said “she did not respond to a request to speak with
her canon lawyer” and that “her spokesmen declined to comment on a personal
matter.”
In a 2022 open letter addressed to the former speaker of
the House of Representatives, Cordileone prohibited Pelosi from receiving holy
Communion because of her public position on abortion. He cited Canon 915 of the
Code of Canon Law as applying to her case.
According to Mückl, if Pelosi made an appeal under canon law
to the Vatican, she would have needed to have done so within a specific time
frame.
“If Mrs. Pelosi has now lodged an ‘appeal’ with the Holy
See, this will hardly be a recourse in the canonical sense because such a
recourse [would] clearly be out of time,” Mückl told CNA.
“At best it can be assumed that it is a ‘political appeal,’”
he said. “A recourse in the technical sense would be time-barred.”
Referring to Canons 1734 and 1735 of the Code of Canon Law,
Mückl explained that Pelosi would have had “10 days to seek revocation of a
decree by the author [Cordileone], then 30 days for proposing recourse to the
hierarchical superior [Pope Francis].”
In response to Pelosi’s comments in the National Catholic
Reporter, the archbishop of San Francisco issued a statement Dec. 10 expressing his desire to
speak with the politician.
“As a pastor of souls, my overriding concern and chief responsibility
is the salvation of souls. And as Ezekiel reminds us, for a pastor to
fulfill his calling, he has the duty not only to teach, console, heal, and
forgive but also, when necessary, to correct, admonish, and call to
conversion,“ Cordileone wrote.
“I therefore earnestly repeat once again my plea
to Speaker Pelosi to allow this kind of dialogue to happen,” he added.
According to Mückl, if Pelosi refuses to engage in dialogue
with Cordileone, “juridically speaking she has not fulfilled her duty to
cooperate.”
However, Pope Francis is “free to take the matter to
himself,” Mückl told CNA. “Whether he would actually do so is
difficult to predict.”
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