(LifeSiteNews) — A Spanish bishop decried Joe Biden’s signing of the cross over himself at a pro-abortion rally apparently in opposition to Florida’s six-week abortion ban as “sacrilegious.”
Bishop José Ignacio Munilla of Orihuela-Alicante in Spain called Biden’s gesture a “desecration of the sign of the cross” during his weekday radio program on Radio María España, the National Catholic Register reported.
During a campaign event and rally in support of abortion in Tampa, Florida, on April 23, organized to protest the state’s abortion restrictions, Biden made the sign of the cross as Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said, “15 weeks wasn’t good enough. We had to go to six weeks,” complaining about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ approval of a six-week abortion ban last year.
READ: Biden campaign says promoting abortion is ‘top priority’ for second term
Crossing oneself is meant to be used as a sign “in which we remember that Jesus gave His life for us, He gave His life for all the innocents, He gave His life to restore innocence and to make us saints,” said Munilla.
To use the sign of the cross as Biden did, while supporting the killing of innocent unborn children, is to “invoke the cross in a sacrilegious manner,” the bishop pointed out.
He noted that “Invoking Jesus Christ in support of abortion” has drawn strong criticism “in many pro-life and Catholic circles.”
Biden’s gesture was indeed swiftly and forcefully condemned by many Catholics as an offense against God, the Catholic faith, and unborn children.
This. Is. VILE!
President Biden makes the Sign of the Cross at an abortion rally in Florida!
You cannot be Catholic and support abortion!
You cannot invoke GOD and promote Death! pic.twitter.com/aG4P542EM0
— CatholicVote (@CatholicVote) April 23, 2024
“Biden’s decision to make the sign of the cross in support of abortion extremism is a despicable charade that attempts to co-opt a sacred practice in support of his new abortion religion,” remarked CatholicVote President Brian Burch. “His gesture openly mocks the Christian belief in the sanctity of life.”
“There is no divine support for destroying the lives of innocent children, and he should know better,” he added. “Biden’s gesture suggests he is either terribly naive, or senile, or callously indifferent to the foundational beliefs of millions of Christians in America.”
Bishop Joseph Strickland, bishop emeritus of Tyler, Texas, responded to the gesture in a statement posted on X, “Absolutely vile, pray for the soul of our president, he is a feeble old man, he needs to prepare to meet his maker.”
“His making the sign is absolutely evil, a symbolic rejection of the Catholic faith he purports to believe,” wrote Deacon Keith Fournier.
“I wish, for the salvation of his soul, his Bishop would formally excommunicate him,” continued the deacon. “It was, from the earliest centuries, a remedy to return a sinner back to Jesus Christ.”
The Catholic Church teaches, in accordance with the natural law, that abortion is always a grave sin and an “abominable crime,” which the Church punishes with excommunication.
Bishop Munilla also weighed in on the moral suitability of both Biden and former President Donald Trump as contenders for the presidency in the 2024 election.
“In a nation like the United States, shouldn’t there be [candidates] from both the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party with enough moral stature to properly represent their parties to the electorate?” he asked.
“Consider what Biden represents with his deteriorating condition, even psychologically, to run for president again with this absolute desecration of his own (purportedly Catholic) values, having made the cause of abortion, the spread of abortion throughout the world, almost his highest value,” Munilla said.
Munilla prayed that God “would raise up vocations to public life so that there are truly young people who, with a life of integrity consistent with their values, have as their only watchword, as the only driving force of their entering into political life, the desire to serve the common good.”
Earlier this year, Munilla called on the Vatican to withdraw Fiducia Supplicans, calling it a “departure from Christian morality.”