Advertise in this spot on CatholicCulture.org. View all ads.

Catholic World News News Feature

Lay group protests Jesuit-school honors for Pelosi May 18, 2007

An American lay group is urging a Jesuit university to rescind an invitation for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, to speak at the school's commencement ceremonies.

The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) has urged the University of San Francisco (USF) to cancel its invitation to Pelosi, because of her outspoken defense of legal abortion. CNS also opposes the USF plan to award a posthumous honorary degree to pro-abortion politician Leo T. McCarthy. “Even as we celebrate the fact that a growing number of Catholic colleges are choosing exemplary commencement speakers and honorees, we learn that the University of San Francisco has chosen a much different direction,” wrote CNS President Patrick J. Reilly in a letter faxed to the USF president, Father Stephen Privett, SJ. "You are publicly allying a Catholic university with leaders of what Pope John Paul II called a culture of death." CNS also asked Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco, who is scheduled to receive an honorary degree, to boycott the ceremony if USF refuses to change its plans. Speaker Pelosi is a vocal advocate of abortion rights, opposing even the federal ban on partial-birth abortions and protective legislation such as parental consent for minors. She also supports embryonic stem-cell research. Leo McCarthy died in February and is receiving his award posthumously as "an individual who embodies the university's mission," according to a USF press release. As a US Senate candidate in 1988 and 1992, he pledged to write the Roe v. Wade ruling into federal law, supported federal funding for abortions and contraceptives, and advocated distribution of the abortion pill RU-486.