By Christina Capitides
A priest in Rhode Island, Reverend Richard Bucci, made national headlines last week by banning lawmakers who supported the state’s abortion rights bill from receiving communion at his parish. Now, he is doubling down on that decision with a statement that’s sending shockwaves through social media.
The 72-year-old priest recently passed out fliers to parishioners listing the names of all 44 members of the legislature who voted for the Reproductive Privacy Act, which was signed into law last spring. The flier stated that those individuals would also be banned from acting as witnesses to marriage, serving as godparents, and performing readings at weddings and funerals, citing “2,000 years” of Catholic teachings.
Then, in an interview Sunday, Bucci’s rhetoric went further.
“Pedophilia doesn’t kill anyone and this does,” he told local station WJAR, claiming that more children have been killed by abortion than have been abused.
This statement didn’t sit well with State Representative Carol Hagan McEntee, a Democrat who championed Rhode Island’s law to extend the statute of limitations for child sex abuse survivors.
“When he says that pedophilia doesn’t kill people, well, he clearly doesn’t understand,” she told CBS News. “He should’ve come to the statehouse and listened to the testimonies because there are lot of victims who are no longer with us. The injured voices that I heard — they’ve stolen their childhoods. They’ve practically destroyed their lives. And the ones we still hear from are the lucky ones because they’re the ones who are still alive; they didn’t die of an overdose or suicide. You know, there’s plenty of those that never made it long enough to come forward.”