He now says these politicians cannot only be barred from speaking in Catholic institutions but are so deeply offensive that they risk excommunication -the gravest punishment the church can impose.

Raimondo now announces that the Pope has laid a papal ban on Rienzi, and that his associates risk excommunication.

Though he said "we very much would like a peaceful solution, without compromising our beliefs," he added that those beliefs "are valuable enough for the priests to risk silencing and the members to risk excommunication."

In 1990, he warned Catholic politicians that they risked excommunication if they supported abortion rights.

Excommunication Issue Three Roman Catholics in Corpus Christi, Tex., were warned by the head of the local diocese in recent months that they risked excommunication because of their work in abortion clinics.

The Vatican warned adherents of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre today that they risk excommunication if they continue to follow the traditionalist prelate's movement.

Roman Catholic clergymen and scholars are voicing widely varying views on John Cardinal O'Connor's warning to Roman Catholic politicians that they risk excommunication if they persist in supporting a woman's right to abortion.

She recalled that they had shown her a videotape of pictures of aborted fetuses and warned her that she risked excommunication from the Catholic Church.

"Then you do so over my direct orders to the contrary and thereby risk immediate excommunication."

In 1990, John Cardinal O'Connor of New York suggested that, by supporting abortion rights, Catholic politicians who were pro-choice risked excommunication.