*US Congressman Refused Communion for Supporting Abortion* The nephew of ex-president John F. Kennedy, a US lawmaker, has been barred from receiving communion at his Catholic church due to his support for abortion rights, a newspaper reported. US Representative Patrick Kennedy, son of the late senator Edward Kennedy, was told of the move by Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin, according to The Providence Journal newspaper in the US state of Rhode Island. Kennedy represents a district in Rhode Island in the US Congress. “The bishop instructed me not to take communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me communion,” the paper quotes Kennedy as saying in a telephone interview.
Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him that he was not a good practicing Catholic because of the positions that he had taken as a public official, particularly on abortion, the report said. The Congressman declined to say when or how Tobin told him not to take the sacrament or whether he had obeyed the bishop's injunction, the report said. Communion is a church ritual that involves the sharing of bread and wine meant to be the body and blood of Jesus Christ. John F. Kennedy was the country’s first Catholic president. COMMENT: What about divorced and remarried people? Are they barred from the sacraments? -- DEV BOREM KORUM.
