The Times says the CNS story was in rebuttal to a letter that was drafted at the request of a high-ranking Vatican official that Marc Balestrieri, a canon lawyer, said indicated that Mr. Kerry should be excommunicated [barred from receiving Communion] because he supported abortion rights.

On Friday, the Times wrote, Balestrieri, who heads a conservative Catholic group called De Fide, released a letter written to him by another American canon lawyer, the Rev. Basil Cole, who said he had written the letter at the request of a high-ranking official in the Vatican office responsible for matters of church doctrine, the Very Rev. Augustine Di Noia.

In the letter Fr. Cole wrote, "If a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy" and is "automatically excommunicated."

But on Tuesday, Fr. Di Noia, an American priest and under secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, took steps to distance himself from the letter.

He told CNS, "The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has had no contact with Mr. Balestrieri," and denied Balestrieri's "claim that the private letter he received from Father Basil Cole is a Vatican response is completely without merit."

According to the Times, which has endorsed Kerry's presidential bid, Fr. Di Noia's remarks to the news service "seem to reflect a reluctance by at least some Vatican officials to be perceived as trying to meddle in an American presidential election," the Times quoted Vatican experts as saying.

"I think they know that if they intervene in the election in that direct a manner, it's very problematic diplomatically," Chester Gillis, chairman of the theology department at Georgetown University told the newspaper.

On Aug. 30, Mr. Balestrieri said, he went to Rome and met with the Rev. Diaz Pedro Miguel Funes, a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Mr. Balestrieri said that he asked whether someone who publicly supported abortion rights was guilty of heresy, even if the person was personally opposed to abortion, as Mr. Kerry is.

Balestrieri said he did not tell the Vatican that he was seeking to have Mr. Kerry excommunicated, but the Times wrote that it was not clear whether Vatican officials knew about his effort, which had been reported in the media over the past summer.

Fr. Cole, an associate professor at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington and a friend of Fr. Di Noia, said he received an e-mail request from Fr. Di Noia several days after Mr. Balestrieri's visit.

"I was asked to write a letter as a friend to a friend," Father Cole said. "I had no idea the man was involved in the Kerry thing."

Balestrieri told the Times that he called Fr. Di Noia last week to ask him if it was all right to publicize the letter. He said that the priest told him Father Cole's response was "excellent and solid" and that it could be published.

Fr. Cole said that last Friday, when Mr. Balestrieri released his letter to a Catholic television station, he got an e-mail message from Fr. Di Noia saying something like: "By the way, there was something on television. I'm sorry I got you into this mess. You're going to have people calling you."

Fr. Cole speculated that his friend's comments on Tuesday indicated he was "distancing himself from it as an official." He explained: "There's a distinction in Rome when something's official and when something is off the record. This was off the record."

Kerry has recently pledged "I will not overturn Roe v Wade; I will not appoint judges hostile to 'choice;' I will allow poor women to have free abortions; I will never outlaw abortion; I will increase American taxpayer's dollars on population control efforts around the world."