The head of the Vatican’s chief doctrine office has blasted the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops over its threats to ban President Joe Biden from receiving Communion for his abortion-rights policies. In a stern letter, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote that any individual bishop can decide who can and cannot receive Communion, in contrast to the group’s warning that Biden be banned. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., where Biden currently attends Mass, has said he will not ban Biden from any of the archdiocese’s churches. The letter also accused the USCCB of focusing on abortion as if it was the only issue facing American Catholics, writing that their “misleading” attention could “give the impression that abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest accountability on the part of Catholics.”
