San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is urging Catholics to fast and pray for the “conversion of heart” of pro-abortion Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
“A conversion of heart of the majority of our Congressional representatives is needed” on the abortion issue, Archbishop Cordileone said in a statement this week, “beginning with the leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”
“I am therefore inviting all Catholics to join in a massive and visible campaign of prayer and fasting for Speaker Pelosi,” the archbishop said, and to “commit to praying one rosary a week and fasting on Fridays for her conversion of heart.”
In this July 27, 2012 file photo, newly appointed San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, center, speaks with other members of the church during a press conference held at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. Roman Catholics in this city named for humble St. Francis are in turmoil, sparring with each other over social media and letters to the editor over one controversial figure, the Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. (AP Photo/Michael Short)
Cordileone urged Catholics to sign up for the “Rose and Rosary for Nancy” campaign at BenedictInstitute.org, and to entrust Pelosi’s conversion to God.
The reaction elicited “by the passage of the Texas Heartbeat Bill shows how desperately our country, and many of our political leaders, need a conversion of heart to steer us away from the path to death and reclaim a culture of life,” he said.
While Speaker Pelosi “clearly has a maternal heart,” the archbishop said, the solution “to a woman in a crisis pregnancy is not violence but love.”
“Please join me in praying the rosary and fasting for a conversion of Speaker Pelosi’s maternal heart to embracing the goodness and dignity of human life not only after birth, but in the womb as well,” he concluded.
Cordileone and Pelosi crossed swords last week over the Women’s Health Protection Act, which the U.S. bishops have called “the most radical abortion bill ever.”
Pelosi called the passage of the legislation a “very exciting day,” reaffirming her total support of Roe v. Wade.
“Every woman, everywhere has a constitutional right to basic reproductive health, yet for years that has been questioned by some,” she declared.
For his part, Archbishop Cordileone said it is “especially shameful that any self-professed Catholic would be implicated in such an evil, let alone advocate for it,” adding that the bill “is surely the type of legislation one would expect from a devout Satanist, not a devout Catholic.”
“To Catholic politicians in particular, I implore you to listen to the words of Pope Francis who just last weekend, during his flight back to Rome from Slovakia, said: ‘Abortion is more than a problem. Abortion is homicide,’” the archbishop said.
“Any reasonable person with a basic sense of morality and inkling of decency cannot but shudder in horror at such a heinous evil being codified in law,” he said.
The Catholic Church, to which Speaker Pelosi belongs, teaches that all human beings, from the moment of conception until natural death, have the right to life.
It reserves its severest and rarest of punishments — automatic excommunication — to the commission of abortion, which it understands to be the murder of an innocent human being.
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