Vatican City – Pope Benedict XVI rebuffed calls to let divorced Catholics who remarry receive Communion in a new document Tuesday and told Catholic politicians they are expected to wage the church’s fight against abortion and gay marriage.
Putting his conservative stamp on his nearly 2-year-old papacy, Benedict also reaffirmed that priests must be celibate and included a nostalgic call for Latin use by rank-and- file faithful.
A worldwide meeting of bishops, held at the Vatican in 2005, endorsed the celibacy requirement, and Benedict embraced their call, despite shortages of priests in some places.
The 131-page “exhortation” is part of the pope’s vigorous campaign to ensure that bishops, priests and the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics follow church teaching.
The question of whether Catholic politicians whose policies conflict with church teaching should be denied Communion grabbed attention during the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, when St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke said he would deny the Eucharist to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Catholic who supports abortion rights.
Benedict said public witness to one’s faith was especially required of politicians who decide matters such as abortion, euthanasia, “the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman … and the promotion of the common good in all its values.”
He indicated he was leaving the matter of wayward Catholic politicians to local bishops.
