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.
Excommunication, which bars the person from receiving sacraments and participating in public worship, is the church's most severe punishment, while "self-excommunication" is a less onerous category.
The issue of punishment for Catholic politicians who legislate in ways that conflict with church belief is a debate that has raged for years. Ordering excommunication for Catholic politicians would also have tremendous ramifications in the United States. Although some priests have decided to deny Communion to politicians who favor abortion rights, such punishment has never been a blanket Vatican policy, which is why Benedict's com-ments had such impact and his aides appeared so intent on softening them.
The confusion over what the pope said versus what he meant raised questions about whether Benedict was speaking as supreme pontiff, a leader whose very words establish policy, or in effect as the church's top enforcer of doctrine -- the job he had held as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger for more than two decades.
In Mexico City, Catholic legislators who approved the abortion law accused the pope of mixing religion with the law-making process.
"I did my duty as a legislator and as a woman," said Leticia Quezada, one of the law's chief backers. "I voted to address a crisis of public health.... I will continue to be a believer. The church has no right to interfere in my conscience."
Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who signed the law on April 26, said his government would continue to enforce the legislation. "I would simply and very frankly add," he said, "that we are in the 21st century and not the 16th century."
Abortion, which is illegal, and common, in Brazil, is one of several potentially divisive issues that the pope will face during his five-day visit, when he will also open a major conference of Latin American bishops and canonize Brazil's first native-born saint.
The pilgrimage to Brazil will give the pope his first major test: whether he can reach a non-European crowd full of faithful Catholics who may respect the pontiff but who are unsure he has their concerns at heart. Many see the German-born theologian as aloof to their poverty and unrealistic in his demands for orthodoxy.
