The nephew of former president John F. Kennedy, a US legislator, has been barred from receiving communion at his Catholic church due to his support for abortion rights, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
US Representative Patrick Kennedy, son of the late senator Edward Kennedy, was told of the move by Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin, according to The Providence Journal newspaper in the US state of Rhode Island.
Kennedy represents a district in Rhode Island in the US Congress.
"The bishop instructed me not to take communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me communion," the paper quotes Kennedy as saying in a telephone interview.
Kennedy said the bishop had explained the penalty by telling him that he was not a good practising Catholic because of the positions that he had taken as a public official, particularly on abortion, the report said.
The congressman declined to say when or how Tobin told him not to take the sacrament or whether he had obeyed the bishop's injunction, the report said.
Tobin, through a spokesman, declined to address the question of whether he had told Kennedy not to receive communion, The Journal noted.
But the bishop's office moved quickly to cast doubt on Kennedy's related assertion about instructions to priests in Rhode Island.
"Bishop Tobin has never addressed matters relative to public officials receiving holy communion with pastors of the diocese," the paper quotes the bishop's spokesman Michael Guilfoyle as saying.
Communion is a church ritual that involves the sharing of bread and wine meant to represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
John F. Kennedy was the country's first Catholic president.
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