PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Rep. Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.) defended Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D., R.I.) yesterday against a Catholic bishop who has acknowledged asking Kennedy not to receive Holy Communion because of his support for abortion rights.

“We don’t legislate at the orders of the Vatican. We legislate what is in our conscience and what we think is good for our country,” said Murphy, of Bucks County. Like Kennedy, he is a Catholic and an abortion-rights supporter. Murphy spoke at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where he received a John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award from the late president’s daughter, Caroline.

Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D., Mass.), has clashed with Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, whose diocese covers the most heavily Catholic state in the country, for weeks over health-care changes and publicly financed abortion.

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