Joe Biden reflected on his relationship with Pope Francis, which goes all the way back to 2015 when the Holy Father visited the White House.
Speaking with Stephen Colbert last week, Biden said that Pope Francis has been “incredibly generous” to him.
“The pope has been incredibly generous to my family,” he said. “When he came to visit, we were the house Catholics, and we were the ones showing the pope around and Beau had just died just a couple of weeks earlier, and he had asked to meet with the family in the hangar at the airport as he was leaving in Philly and he came in. We had 16 family members there, and he didn’t just speak about Beau, he spoke in detail about Beau, about who he was, and about family values, and about forgiveness, and about decency.”
Joe Biden added that he is “a great admirer of His Holiness.”
WATCH:
Just last year, a Catholic priest in South Carolina reportedly enforced the church’s code of canon law by denying the former vice president the sacrament of Holy Communion because of his abortion views.
“Sadly, this past Sunday, I had to refuse Holy Communion to former Vice President Joe Biden,” Father Robert E. Morey of Saint Anthony Catholic Church told reporters. “Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other, and the Church. Our actions should reflect that. Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching.”
This past June, after the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, struck down a Louisiana law requiring doctors who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, Biden spoke out about abortion.
“Women’s health care rights have been under attack as states across the country have passed extreme laws restricting women’s constitutional right to choice under any circumstance,” Biden said in a statement. “Today the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that states cannot put in place laws that unduly burden a women’s right to make her own health care decision with her doctor.”
Writing in First Things, former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput argued that Joe Biden should be denied Holy Communion so long as he continues to support abortion.
“Public figures who identify as ‘Catholic’ give scandal to the faithful when receiving Communion by creating the impression that the moral laws of the Church are optional,” wrote Chaput. “And bishops give similar scandal by not speaking up publicly about the issue and danger of sacrilege.”
“Those bishops who publicly indicate in advance that they will undertake their own dialogue with President-elect Joseph Biden and allow him Communion effectively undermine the work of the task force established at the November bishops’ conference meeting to deal precisely with this and related issues,” he continued. “This gives scandal to their brother bishops and priests, and to the many Catholics who struggle to stay faithful to Church teaching. It does damage to the bishops’ conference, to the meaning of collegiality, and to the fruitfulness of the conference’s advocacy work with the incoming administration.”
Related: Former Philly Archbishop: Joe Biden Should Be Denied Holy Communion