Pontifical Academy for Life say no to ‘vaccine nationalism’
The Pontifical Academy for Life has stressed the importance of overcoming “vaccine nationalism” so that everyone can have the opportunity of being vaccinated and nobody is left behind in the fight against Covid-19.
A statement from the Academy warns that “faced with the very serious problems that are arising in relation to the production and distribution of the vaccine for Covid-19”, identifying suitable systems for transparency and collaboration has become “urgent”.
“There is too much antagonism and competition and the risk of severe injustices”, reads the statement.
The statement goes on to recall a joint document, released on December 29 by the Dicastery for Integral Human Development and the Pontifical Academy for Life. The document stresses the importance of vaccination and “the modalities that can make the vaccine a common good for everybody”.
The statement stresses that “this is an extraordinary opportunity for a new, more supportive future”. A series of tools must be specified and implemented in order to achieve “universal accessibility”. In this way, concludes the statement, “the Pope’s appeal can be made concrete: ‘everyone, brothers and sisters!’”
Pope: Failure to remember Holocaust will lead world down same path
At his General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed on the anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“Today we commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and all those persecuted and deported by the Nazi regime,” Pope Francis said at his weekly General Audience.
“Remembering is an expression of humanity. Remembering is a sign of civilization,” the Pope said. “Remembering is a condition for a better future of peace and fraternity.”
Pope Francis continued, saying, “remembering also means being careful because these things could happen again, beginning with ideological proposals intended to save a people and ending by destroying a people and humanity”. He warned that we must be attentive “to how this path of death, of extermination, and brutality begin”.
Pope Francis himself visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, on the site of the infamous Nazi death camp, during his visit to Poland in 2016. He became the third Pope to visit the site, following Pope St John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Vatican officials hold funeral for man who used to live on streets nearby
Two cardinals, an archbishop and a dozen priests concelebrated a funeral Mass January 25 for Roberto Molinari, a soccer player decades ago, who spent much of the past few years living on the streets near the Vatican. According to Vatican News, the many people whom Mr Molinari befriended and who tried to help him, recently convinced him to move into a homeless shelter after he’d had numerous bouts of pneumonia.
The 64-year-old died in a shelter by Rome’s main train station. Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, presided over the funeral Mass at the Rome parish of St Pius X; Cardinal George Pell, who lives near where Molinari would sleep, concelebrated, as did Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
Also in attendance were: volunteers from Natale 365, which runs the shelter where he was staying; Italian state police from the station on the square where Molinari often slept; and members of the Community of Sant’Egidio, who run the Vatican’s newest homeless shelter and coordinate the distribution of food to the homeless in many areas of the city.