Pope Francis prayed at noon for Angelus in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican on Sunday.
Gregorio Borgia / AP
hide captions
switch captions
Gregorio Borgia / AP
Pope Francis prayed at noon for Angelus in St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican on Sunday.
Gregorio Borgia / AP
ROME – Pope Francis on Monday suggested that vaccination against the coronavirus is a “moral obligation” and denounced how people have been swayed by “baseless information” to deny one of the measures. The most effective way to save lives.
Pope Francis used some of his strongest words to urge people to get vaccinated during a speech to recognized ambassadors to the Holy See, an annual event in which he observes the world and sets out the Vatican’s foreign policy goals for the year.
Francis, 85, often shyes away from talking about vaccinations as a “moral obligation”, although his COVID-19 advisory body has called it a “moral responsibility”. Rather, Pope Francis has called vaccination “an act of love” and refusal to vaccinate is “an act of suicide”.
On Monday, he went a step further, saying that individuals have a responsibility to care for themselves “and this means respecting the health of those around us. Healthcare is a moral obligation,” he asserted.
He lamented that there were more and more ideological divisions that kept people from getting vaccinated.
“People often allow themselves to be influenced by the ideology of the times, often reinforced by unfounded information or poorly documented facts,” he said, calling for adoption uses a “practical therapy” to correct distortions of human reason.
He added: “Vaccines are by no means a miracle cure, but they certainly represent, alongside other treatments to be developed, the most sensible solution to preventing the disease. this.
Some Catholics, including some conservative US bishops and cardinals, have declared a vaccine based on research using cells taken from aborted fetuses and have refused. inject.
However, the Vatican’s doctrinal office said it was “ethically acceptable” for Catholics to receive a COVID-19 vaccine based on research using cells derived from infected fetuses. Destroy. Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI have been fully vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech shots.
Pope Francis repeated calls for universal access to injections, especially in parts of the world with low vaccination rates, and called for a revision of patenting rules so that poorer countries can develop their own vaccines.
“Organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization tailor their legal instruments as appropriate to avoid monopolistic rules that constitute further obstacles to to manufacturing and to organized and consistent access to healthcare on a global scale,” he said.
