Here we go again with SF's unhinged Catholic conservative archbishop trying to get attention.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone penned a public letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, condemning her pro-choice stance, and attempting — yet again — to gain notoriety for himself amidst the national war over abortion rights. The archbishop tells Pelosi this week that she's no longer welcome to receive communion wafers, at least under his watch.

At the risk of giving him the attention he craves, and only because he's an evil-comic villain in the story of modern-day San Francisco whom we can't seem to ignore, we shall publish an excerpt here.

"I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of penance," Cordileone writes.

This is the third time in recent months that Cordileone has attempted to use the Holy Communion ritual as a bargaining chip in the abortion debate.

He spent $50K of the church's money on a digital ad last fall in order to call out Pelosi and to urge Catholics to join him in prayer and fasting for Pelosi and her anti-abortion ways, "from here in San Francisco."

And in an opinion piece in the Washington Post last September, shortly after the Supreme Court decided to let stand a Texas law banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, Cordileone called on all archbishops to stand up to Catholic politicians who are pro-choice.

"As a faith leader in the Catholic community, I find it especially disturbing that so many of the politicians on the wrong side of the preeminent human rights issue of our time are self-professed Catholics," Cordileone wrote. Cordileone made an implied comparison between himself and New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel from the 1940s, who stood up to segregation and campaigned for civil rights.

Cordileone proceeded to call on Washington, DC Archbishop Wilton Gregory to deny President Biden Holy Communion.

Cordileone will go down in infamy here in SF for being akin to COVID-deniers and everyone on the far right who spent the pandemic trying to deny that there was a pandemic. Cordileone railed against legal decisions that forced the closure of churches for in-person worship, believing that sacraments like Holy Communion are more important than preserving the lives of elderly parishioners who don't know better than to listen to him.

Under his watch, several priests in San Francisco secretly held indoor services. And then late last year we learned that Cordileone himself was not vaccinated because, spuriously, he believed that he had an extra "good immune system" and didn't need any vaccine. He also made a bunch of anti-science, misinformed statements on a Chronicle podcast about how asymptomatic people with COVID "very rarely" spread the disease, and that he'd just stay home if he became sick.

And let's not forget how he took time out from denying COVID in June 2020 to host an "exorcism" in Golden Gate Park when some anti-racism protesters took down a statue of Junipero Serra, because that's helpful.

This is not a man anyone should be listening to for thoughts on any subject, let alone women's reproductive rights. And like one letter-writer from around the country who wrote to the Post to react to Cordileone's op-ed last year said, "People such as Archbishop Cordileone are not really pro-life; they are simply antiabortion. ... The American bishops are silent when it comes to gun violence in our country. They will take on Planned Parenthood but not the National Rifle Association. Gun violence kills children and babies in the womb, but I have heard not even a peep from these so-called pro-life bishops."

Previously: SF’s Nutty Archbishop Takes On Pelosi in National Advertising Campaign