SAO PAULO, BRAZIL — Launching his first papal pilgrimage to the Americas, Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of abortion and immediately touched off a firestorm by suggesting Catholic politicians who legalize it have excommunicated themselves from the church.
The flap began hours before his plane even touched down here, when he spoke to reporters in flight from Rome during his first full-fledged news conference as pontiff.
Asked whether he agreed with excommunication of Mexican legislators who recently legalized abortion in Mexico City, Benedict replied, "Yes."
"The excommunication was not something arbitrary," he continued. "It is part of the Code [of Canon Law]. It is based simply on the principle that the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with being in Communion with the body of Christ. Thus, [the bishops] didn't do anything new or anything surprising, or arbitrary."
As the flight continued, the pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, made several appearances of his own before the reporters in an attempt to downplay Benedict's statement. Roman Catholic church leaders in Mexico have not actually excommunicated the legislators, Lombardi noted, and said that the pope meant that politicians who favor abortion rights in effect excommunicate themselves and should be denied Communion, a milder sanction. Benedict did not mean to set new policy, Lombardi said.
"If the bishops haven't excommunicated anyone, it's not that the pope wants to," Lombardi said. "Legislative action in favor of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist. Politicians exclude themselves from Communion."
Later, after arriving in Brazil, the largest Catholic nation in the world, Benedict made further strong remarks about abortion.
Speaking under drizzly leaden skies after being greeted by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the pope said he was confident that Brazilians will protect "values that are radically Christian," including respect for "life from the moment of conception until natural death as an integral requirement of human nature."
Lula welcomed the pope in a small ceremony inside a cavernous military airport hangar in this city, the first stop as Benedict seeks to confront a continent whose once-universal Catholicism has been eroded and whose church is profoundly divided. At the Benedictine monastery where the pope is staying, hundreds of people chanted his name and kept vigil late into the night. But others, including politicians in Mexico City who voted to legalize first-trimester abortions, appeared stung by the pope's in-flight remarks.
