Cardinal Roger Mahony, in Rome for the Los Angeles bishops' ad limina visit, said this week he believes the church's efforts to educate people about the reality and immorality of abortion are more effective than imposing sanctions on politicians who support legal abortion.

The cardinal spoke to Catholic News Service at the Vatican May 11, one day after he and Los Angeles' auxiliary bishops met with Pope John Paul II. The bishops' ad limina visits with the Holy Father are held every five years.

On May 5, Cardinal Mahony met privately with Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry and his wife at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The cardinal called the meeting with the presumptive Democratic nominee for president "very cordial, very friendly," but private.

The cardinal said Kerry and his wife had arranged to visit the new Los Angeles cathedral during a Cinco de Mayo campaign stop in Los Angeles and had asked if the cardinal would be available for a meeting.

The conflict between church teaching and Kerry's political position on abortion has been a source of controversy, especially since February, when Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis said he would refuse Communion to Kerry because of his abortion stand.

In Rome, Cardinal Mahony told CNS: "I'm slightly mystified why this is all coming up now. We've had pro-choice Catholic politicians going to Communion since Roe vs. Wade," the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

"The church has always been quite cautious about denying anyone the sacraments of the church," he said. "And, in fact, with respect to the Eucharist, it really is not possible for a priest or bishop to deny someone Communion unless that person is known to have been a public sinner, in the sense of having been interdicted or excommunicated or formally sanctioned in some way.

"The presumption is that if someone presents himself for Communion, that they are doing so with the belief that they are in a state of grace and receiving in good faith the Eucharist," he said.

"That is the decision the communicant makes, not the person giving Communion," Cardinal Mahony said.

Cardinal Mahony told CNS Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, "Evangelium Vitae" ("The Gospel of Life"), encourages Catholics to defend life at every stage of its development and it lists "a number" of serious threats, including abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment.

"If one were to begin cataloguing who should or should not go to Communion, according to the Holy Father's list," he said, one might have to consider supporters of the death penalty and other threats to life.

"The Gospel of Life," Cardinal Mahony said, was written "to encourage a change of heart and mind."

The cardinal said the only way to reduce and eventually eliminate abortion is to convince people that it is wrong.

"What the church has been doing has had great success," he said, citing a recent poll of young women showing that support for the most liberal access to legalized abortion "has dropped from 64 percent to 55 percent."

"The politicians themselves are not going in for abortions; it's women themselves, so that's the group we need to influence," he said.

The positive efforts to educate people about the reality of abortion and to offer women alternatives, the cardinal said, "are dealt a very negative blow if all of a sudden the church starts sanctioning people."

Cardinal Mahony said Catholic leaders, including lay leaders, must have a regular dialogue with Catholic politicians, discussing political issues from the point of view of Catholic moral and social teaching.

"That's our responsibility," he said. "We have not been doing that effectively."

In addition, the cardinal said, the Catholic Church in the United States must increase its efforts to let Catholic voters know about the political responsibility statements it issues, to educate them about the church's moral and social teaching and to encourage them to vote according to a well-formed conscience.

"We bishops have to be very careful," he said. "We cannot be giving the impression that we are telling people to vote for this candidate or that candidate. That has never been our role, and if we give the impression that that is what we are doing, then we have failed our people."