(CNSNews.com) – The Jesuit-run University of Scranton has rejected a call by the bishop of Scranton to disinvite a top pro-abortion advocate from speaking at a women’s political event the university is hosting.

According to the Diocese of Scranton, Bishop Joseph C. Bambera last week personally asked the university to withdraw its invitation to former Rep. Marjorie Margolies (D-Pa.), because Margolies championed the pro-abortion agenda in the 90s when she was in Congress – and continues to do so as a feminist activist.

The event is part of the national “Ready to Run Program,” a bipartisan training program sponsored by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

On Thursday, the University of Scranton rejected the bishop’s appeal.

“The University has decided to move forward with the program as planned,” it said in a statement. “Speakers for this University event are experts chosen to provide women with information about the challenges of politics; they are not chosen to engage in a discussion of abortion. By inviting these speakers to campus, the University is not endorsing their personal views.”

The university, meanwhile, reiterated the school’s opposition to abortion.

“As Catholic and Jesuit, the University treasures its relationship with the Diocese of Scranton and with Bishop Bambera,” the statement said. “We are saddened that any action on our part might in some way compromise this relationship. This is especially true given that we, like Bishop Bambera, strongly oppose the pro-abortion views of Ms. Margolies.”

But in a statement released Friday, the diocese said Bishop Bambera was extremely disappointed at the decision.

“The University’s unwillingness to work with Bishop Bambera in an effort to reach an acceptable resolution to this unfortunate situation is an unsettling turn in the relationship that the Bishop has been pleased to maintain with University officials during his tenure as Bishop of Scranton.”

“The gravity of this issue speaks to the heart and substance of who we are as Christians,” Bambera was quoted as saying. “Because of the incarnation of Christ, every human life has value and worth,” the bishop said. “As Christians, we must be committed to defending human life at every age and every stage from conception to natural death.”

He added: “Although a forum such as this, designed to support and encourage women to engage in public service is by its nature good and noble, for a Catholic institution in the Diocese of Scranton to invite a pro-abortion advocate to speak at a University sponsored event is dismaying and personally disheartening to me. And to do so within days of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., is particularly demoralizing.”

Margolies served one term from 1993-1995 in Congress as a Democrat for Pennsylvania’s 13^th district. Emily’s List, a national group which funds abortion-supporting politicians, claims Margolies as one of the women they helped elect to office.

In Congress, Margolies was a co-sponsor of the Abortion Clinic Access Bill, which sought to make it a federal crime to impede access to abortion clinics.

She also voted in support of an Abortion Counseling Bill, which would have required federal recipients of funds for family planning to provide patients with information about obtaining an abortion; and she opposed the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the federal funding of abortions.

She cast the deciding vote for the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that raised taxes, after saying she would vote against it.

Following her time in Congress, Margolies chaired the National Women’s Business Council and served as the director and deputy chair of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. She also served as executive director of the Women’s Campaign Fund, a pro-abortion group.

The University of Scranton is not the first Catholic university to buck a local bishop who asked it to disinvite a pro-abortion activist politician from speaking.

In 2009, Bishop John D’Arcy of the Catholic Diocese of Fort-Wayne-South Bend, Ind., boycotted the University of Notre Dame, after the university president flouted the bishop and decided to award President Obama an honorary degree.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, head of the Vatican’s highest court, condemned Notre Dame's action at the time.

“We all have witnessed the compromise and, indeed, betrayal of the Catholic identity of Notre Dame University,” Burke said at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on May 8, 2009.

“Catholic institutions cannot offer any platform to, let alone honor, those who teach and act publicly against the moral law,” Burke said.

Catholic teaching makes bishops responsible for Catholic universities in the hands of the bishops

Catholic Canon Law 810, subsection 2 states: “The conferences of bishops and diocesan bishops concerned have the duty and right of being watchful so that the principles of Catholic doctrine are observed faithfully in these same universities.”

Catholic Canon Law 2269 states in part: “Those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them.”