RC officials take hard line on gluten-free wafer

NEW YORK (AFP) - Roman Catholic officials have invalidated the First Communion of a New Jersey girl with a rare digestive disorder whose gluten intolerance put her on a collision course with Catholic doctrine.

Haley Pelly-Waldman suffers from celiac sprue disease and cannot eat wheat, rye, oats, barley or malt, so when it came time for her to take the sacrament for the first time, her mother Liz asked her priest to allow Haley to eat bread made without gluten, which is a component of wheat.

The priest at St. Denis Catholic Church in Manasquan, a town on the Jersey shore refused, so Pelly-Waldman found a priest who would serve Haley a gluten-free wafer.

But last month the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, stepped in and declared that the Communion was invalid because of the substitute wafer.

Trenton Bishop John Smith could not be reached for comment Friday, but in a statement issued last week, he pointed out that Catholic canon law stipulates that the Eucharist must be made solely of wheat, and "contain enough gluten to effect the confection of bread."

"This is not an issue to be determined at the diocesan or parish level, but has already been decided for the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world by Vatican authority," he said.

Liz Pelly-Waldman of Brielle, New Jersey, not content to leave the matter there, has written to a Vatican official, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asking for his help.

"I don't think my daughter's personal relationship with Christ is affected by an ingredient," said Pelly-Waldman. "The divinity of the Eucharist doesn't lie in the wheat."