Pope Benedict has spoken:

It didn’t take long for Pope Benedict XVI’s first trip to the Western Hemisphere to generate controversy — in fact, it started ten hours before he landed.

On Wednesday, as he flew toward his much anticipated five-day trip in Brazil, the Pope addressed the question of the “good standing” of Catholic politicians who support abortion rights — a delicate issue that has come up in the U.S., Europe and, most recently, Mexico. During an unprecedented 25-minute on-flight press conference, Benedict left little room for interpretation: pro-choice politicians not only should be denied communion, but face outright excommunication from the Church for supporting “the killing of a human child.” The Pope’s declaration came in response to recent comments from the spokesman of the Mexican bishops conference, who said politicians who pushed through a new Mexico City pro-choice law were to be excommunicated.

Standing before an Alitalia cabin full of reporters, two hours into the 12-hour flight to Sao Paulo, the Pope expressed his support for the Mexican bishops in the face of that country’s first-ever law legalizing first term abortions. “Yes, that they are excommunicated isn’t something arbitrary. It’s envisioned in the law of the Church that the killing of a human child is incompatible with being in communion with the body of Christ.”

That is one of the ‘problems’ I ‘have’ with the Catholic Church: these kind of strict rules. Besides, this is not just a religious issue, it is also, first and foremost, a political issue. Separation of Church and State and all that.