Some Catholics want Biden excommunicated, but claim of effort underway is baseless | Fact check

BrieAnna J. Frank, USA TODAY
·4 min read
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The claim: Post implies Biden is facing excommunication action from the Catholic Church

An April 2 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) suggests an effort is underway within the Catholic Church to penalize President Joe Biden.

“BREAKING: Biden facing excommunication from the Catholic church,” reads the post.

"Best news I've heard in a long time," reads one of the comments. Another says the purported action "should have already been done."

It received more than 100 shares in less than a week.

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The implication here is baseless. Two Catholic leaders suggested in late March that Biden should be excommunicated for his political positions, which they described as contradictory to Catholic teachings. But there is no evidence any such effort is underway within the Catholic Church.

Excommunication is 'very, very rare,' expert says

Biden is only the second Catholic president, with President John F. Kennedy being the first. There are no reports of any effort to excommunicate the president from the Holy See Press Office, Vatican News or any credible media outlets, though some Catholic leaders have promoted the idea.

Cardinal Gerhard Muller, who previously served as prefect of the Vatican's highest doctrine office, suggested Biden should be excommunicated in an interview with the pro-life website LifeSite News that was published on March 28.  He condemned Biden’s stance on abortion and described the president as “nominally a Catholic.”

“In other times people like this would be excommunicated,” Muller said, according to the outlet. “In former times the popes and the bishops had no fear to excommunicate, like St. Ambrose of Milan.”

LifeSite started a petition to encourage the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to excommunicate Biden. It received more than 50,000 signatures as of April 12.

Additionally, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who served as papal ambassador to the U.S. between 2011 and 2016, said in a March 31 post on X, formerly Twitter, that Biden had “incurred latae sententiae excommunication,” another form of excommunication that happens automatically for certain offenses, and therefore “must be expelled from the churches and not admitted to Communion."

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Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, said such rhetoric stems from Catholic canon law, which says those who procure an abortion are automatically excommunicated and that those "obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin" should be denied communion.

Though there have long been calls for such actions against Biden and other Democratic leaders, including California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Faggioli said the Vatican itself has not sought to pursue them.

The institution sent a letter to U.S. bishops in 2021 that warned them against a proposal to deny communion to Catholic officials who support abortion rights. Biden also said Pope Francis told him he should continue receiving communion in a meeting later that year.

Michele Dillon, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire with expertise in the Catholic Church, said the claim Biden is facing excommunication is "a bit outlandish" given that the punishment is "very, very rare."

Faggioli said Democrats' increased attention to abortion rights given the Supreme Court's overturn of Roe v. Wade and it being an election year make the appearance of claims such as the one in the Facebook post more likely.

“This is a kind of noise that is destined to become louder in the next few months,” he said.

USA TODAY has debunked an array of claims about Biden, including that he signed an executive order ending Social Security, that he replaced Easter Sunday with Transgender Day of Visibility and that his executive order allowed ineligible convicts and undocumented immigrants to vote.

USA TODAY reached out to the Vatican, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive responses.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, Biden is not facing excommunication | Fact check