Meeting with the Pope

RICHARD A. SOKERKA

President Joe Biden will have an audience with Pope Francis Oct. 29, the day before the G20 Leaders’ Summit starts in Rome.

According to a statement from the White House press office, “They will discuss working together on efforts grounded in respect for fundamental human dignity, including ending the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling the climate crisis, and caring for the poor.”

Conveniently missing from the White House statement is the mention of any discussion between Pope Francis and the Presi­dent on Biden’s ardent support and promotion of abortion since his first day in office.

Just last week, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, once again called out the President for his constant focus on any and every way he can advance his abortion agenda.

The archbishop said the Administration’s latest action, reversing a Trump-era directive, the “Protect Life Rule,” which barred tax dollars from Title X recipients who provide or promote abortion and required Title X clinics to be physically separate from abortion clinics, was “really sad. The Biden Administra­tion is in the control of abortion extremists.”

Archbishop Naumann stressed that Title X was “intended and authorized to be a program entirely separate from abortion.” Abortion, he concluded, is not family planning. Instead, it wounds women and “takes the life of an already-conceived and growing child.”

Right now, the archbishop said, the Biden administration is “looking for every opportunity to expand abortion.”

The archbishop challenged President Biden, only the second Catholic president in U.S. history, to defend and cherish human life as the Catholic Church, which he claims membership in, does.

“He likes to call himself a ‘devout Catholic.’ I would urge him to begin to act like one, especially on the life issues,” the archbishop said. “And to let his faith really inform his conscience and the decisions that he’s making, not the platform of his party.”

And lest Biden needs to be reminded, Pope Francis has compared abortion to “hiring a hit man,” and said as recently as September 2021 that “abortion is murder.”

During Respect Life Month, as the President meets with Pope Francis, we urge all Catholics to pray for a conversion of heart for Mr. Biden so that during the rest of his presidency he prioritizes what his faith teaches about life in the womb and turns away from being a “hired hitman” for abortion that his party demands.