VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's top doctrinal watchdog, American Archbishop William Levada, has urged a meeting of the world's bishops to discuss whether Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should receive Communion, saying the issue had divided many of the faithful in the United States.

Levada, the senior American at the Vatican who heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asked to hear the experiences of other church leaders during the synod of bishops, the Oct. 2-23 meeting to discuss major issues facing the church.

"This issue has caused some divisions among the people in the church during the last election," Levada said Monday, according to the Rev. John Bartunek, who briefed reporters on Tuesday on developments of the closed-door meetings.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke said he would deny the Eucharist to Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a Catholic who supports abortion rights. Other church leaders weighed in on the topic, including Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, who said he wasn't comfortable denying the Eucharist.

McCarrick heads a task force of U.S. bishops that is looking into how prelates should respond to the issue. He has said Catholic politicians who support abortion rights and other issues may risk sanctions that fall short of denial of Communion.

The working document for the synod said it was a sin for the faithful to support Catholic politicians who themselves back abortion and other policies contrary to church teaching.

Bartunek said the issue of the shortage of priests also came up during the first two days of discussions, but made no mention of suggestions of addressing it by allowing married men into the priesthood or ordaining women as deacons.

However, Patriarch Gregory III Laham, patriarch of Antioch of the Greek-Melkite Church, an Eastern rite church, raised the issue Monday, saying there was no theological foundation for a celibate priesthood, according to the Italian summary of the meeting. The Eastern rite churches that are loyal to Rome allow married priests.

Cardinal Angelo Scola, the key moderator of the discussion, responded that there were theological reasons for celibacy in the Latin rite churches, although he didn't elaborate, according to the briefing.

A Honduran bishop, Roberto Camilleri Azzopardi, said the key to solve the priest shortage was a better distribution of priests in the world - a solution suggested by Scola in his opening speech. Camilleri noted that in his diocese there was one priest for every 16,000 Catholics, Bartunek said.

A South Korean bishop, Monsignor Peter Kang U-il, said a shortage of faithful, not priests, was his main concern. "Children who don't go to Mass say they don't go because they find it boring," he said, adding that his priority was to increase the desire among the faithful to participate.

While Pope Benedict XVI listened in the Vatican's synod hall where the meetings are taking place, across the River Tiber members of the European-based We Are Church and the American FutureChurch reform groups outlined their hopes for the session.

"We would like the bishops to have more liberty to decide for themselves, according to the requirements and demands of their specific regions," said German theology professor Norbert Scholl.

Referring to the synod whose specific topic is the Eucharist, the groups said their main concerns were the shortage of priests and the problem of sharing Communion with other Christian denominations.

"When members of the same family cannot sit down and eat together, the family is in trouble," said Austrian psychologist Martha Heizer.

An American nun, Sister Christine Schenk from FutureChurch, noted that parishes in the United States are threatened with closure because of the scarcity of priests. Along with allowing non-celibate men into the priesthood, she suggested women deacons. "There are a lot of available and willing women out there," she told reporters.

The groups expressed the hope that Benedict could make changes.

"He knows the rules of the game," said Heizer, pointing to the pope's 24 years of experience as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before his election to the papacy in April.