http://www.salon.com/opinion/blument.../tk/print.html

extract

April 21, 2005 | President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John
Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After
enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied
Vatican officials to help him win the election. "Not all the American
bishops are with me," he complained, according to the National Catholic
Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up
their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during
the campaign season.

About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S.
bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on
abortion were committing a "grave sin" and must be denied Communion. He
pointedly mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently
campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" --
an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman
Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger
wrote, priests must be ordered to "refuse to distribute it." Any
Catholic who voted for this "Catholic politician," he continued, "would
be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present
himself for Holy Communion." During the closing weeks of the campaign, a
pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the
ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was
nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration
with "evil."

In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from
the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift,
Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states
-- Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico -- moved into Bush's column on the votes of
the Catholic "faithful." Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and
Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving
grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.