Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) politicized faith at a rally in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Pelosi used Christianity as her defense for Democratic proposals during a political rally about ending childhood poverty. Pelosi mentioned that it was Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, which culminates with Easter the following Sunday.
"I didn't know this until recently, that when the Gospel of Matthew, ‘what you have done for the least of my brethren, you did for me,’ was something that Christ said in Holy Week, Tuesday of Holy Week," Pelosi said. "So as we go into Holy Week, as we're people of faith, people of morals, of morality, let us understand what that challenge is on this Palm Sunday to do the Lord's work."
"It is a fact in not only our Catholic faith, our Christian faith, but in all religions, that when we minister to the needs of God's creation, that is an act of worship," Pelosi continued. "To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us. So if these people of such faith in our country truly are and in our state, they will recognize our obligation to our children."
Pelosi had accused Republicans of "exploiting" religion in an interview during President Donald Trump's inauguration.
Pelosi's relationship with the Catholic Church is considered quite tense. Due to Pelosi's support for abortion, the former prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, Raymond Cardinal Burke, recommended in 2013 that Pelosi be banned from receiving communion, one of the strictest punishments the Church can implement.
In 2009, after a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Pelosi released a statement saying she and the Roman Pontiff discussed global warming, poverty, and hunger, only for the Holy See to issue its own statement on the meeting, stating that the pope stressed his opposition to abortion.