Pope Francis granted a private audience in the Vatican to U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Saturday, October 9th during her recent visit to Italy.
It has been reported that President Biden will meet with Francis on October 29th. While serving as the U.S. Vice President, Biden had met with Pope Francis for the first time in September 2015, when the pope visited the United States to attend the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
The following year, on April 29, 2016, Biden went to the Vatican for a summit on regenerative medicine, where he praised Pope Francis and advocated for a global push to cure cancer. Biden had opened his speech at the Vatican by recalling how, while visiting the United States the previous September, Pope Francis had comforted him after the loss of his eldest son Beau, who passed away the previous summer at the age of 46 from brain cancer.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Rome for a gathering of legislative leaders of G20 countries ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Summit in Scotland later this month. “It was a spiritual, personal and official honor to have an audience with His Holiness Pope Francis this morning,” the speaker said in a statement.
Francis’ private meeting with Pelosi, a Catholic and a defender of abortion rights, came as American Catholic bishops consider how to press the church’s teaching against abortion while the country’s second Catholic president, Joe Biden, heads an avowedly pro-choice Democratic administration
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But Francis has cautioned the American bishops — who have debated whether to deny Communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians — not to move too quickly and has repeatedly signaled he does not want the Eucharist to become a political weapon. Flying home from his papal visit to central Europe on Sept. 15, he noted that he has never denied the Eucharist to anyone and that bishops risk becoming embroiled in “political problems” when they don’t act “like shepherds.”
The issue, which dominated the bishops’ national meeting in June, was spurred in part by criticism of pro-choice Catholic leaders by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, who has advocated denying Communion to pro-choice elected officials based in his archdiocese — which would include Pelosi. On Sept. 29, after a bill aimed at overcoming a Texas law severely restricting abortion passed the House, Cordileone asked Catholics to pray for a “conversion of heart” for Pelosi and other Democratic representatives.
The speaker, in her statement on the meeting, emphasized the pontiff’s support for measures to combat climate change. “His Holiness’s encyclical Laudato Si’ is a powerful challenge to the global community to act decisively on the climate crisis with special attention to the most vulnerable communities.” She went on to praise “the immense moral clarity and urgency that His Holiness continues to bring to the climate crisis.”
Pelosi also met with the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, a department created by Francis five years ago to oversee the church’s efforts on issues such as migrants, prisoners, the unemployed and other marginalized people, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, slavery and torture. The meetings came as President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate former lawmaker and anti-abortion Democrat Joseph Donnelly to serve as his Vatican ambassador.
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Thursday, October 7th with Pope Francis and Italian Premier Mario Draghi, who paid tribute to her “calm, determined” leadership even during difficult years for Europe and the common currency. Merkel herself has called this her farewell bilateral trip to Italy as chancellor, and her unusually long 45-minute papal audience and glowing tribute from Draghi indicated her Roman counterparts wanted to pay their respects, too. Merkel and her outgoing government will stay in office on a caretaker basis until a new administration is in place, a process that could take weeks or months.
