The Vatican is now requiring all employees to receive the coronavirus vaccine under threat of being fired or demoted.
Those who refuse to get the shot “without proven health reasons” become liable to “consequences of different degrees that can reach up to the interruption of the employment relationship,” according to a February 8 decree from Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State.
The decree was made public on Thursday, and appears to go against a previous statement by Andrea Arcangeli, the head of the Vatican’s health department. Arcangeli had said in December that the vaccine will not be mandatory for Vatican workers or residents.
Also in December, the Vatican’s doctrinal office (CDF) released a statement on the use of coronavirus vaccines, declaring that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”
At the time of that instruction, it was seen as a clarification of a statement by Fort Wayne Bishop Kevin Rhoades and Kansas City Archbishop Naumann, who jointly said that “being vaccinated safely against COVID-19 should be considered an act of love of our neighbor and part of our moral responsibility for the common good.”
Not long after the CDF put out its statement, Naumann told the Catholic News Service (CNS) that he didn’t mean to suggest there is a moral obligation to get the vaccine.
“The short answer is we don’t have a moral obligation,” Naumann said, asserting that his statement was meant “to show it is permissible to use these vaccines.”
But not long after that, Pope Francis spoke strongly in favor of vaccines, claiming in a TV interview that those who don’t want to take the COVID-19 vaccine are guilty of “suicidal denialism.”
“I think ethically that everyone should take the vaccine,” he told Italian journalist Fabio Marchese Ragona. “It should be done.”
“It is not an option — ‘I think so, I don’t think so’ — it’s an ethical choice, because you gamble with your health, you gamble with your life, and you gamble with other people’s lives … I don’t know why some people say, ‘no, the vaccine is dangerous. Doctors are proposing it as something that can be helpful and as something without special dangers, why wouldn’t you take it?”
“There’s a sort of suicidal denialism at play that I can’t explain,” the pontiff concluded. “Today, you should take the vaccine.”
Francis was reportedly vaccinated in January. The Vatican has made the vaccine mandatory for anyone who wants to travel with the pope on his plane during his upcoming visit to Iraq.
The Vatican pushed back against criticism that requiring the vaccine violates employees’ rights. In a statement, the governorate’s office maintained that sanctions against disobedient employees should not be seen as “punitive.”
Pope Francis has been a strong proponent of limiting citizens’ rights in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
In November of last year, he wrote an op-ed condemning groups that protest COVID-19 lockdowns.
“Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!” the pontiff lambasted.
Moreover, the Vatican even came out and said it’s okay to receive the vaccine even though it’s made with aborted fetal cells.
According to the Vatican, “It is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses” in the research and production process when there are no “ethically irreproachable” vaccines available.
Over and over again, Francis, whose was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has proven himself to be more concerned with left-wing politics than with spiritual matters.
He has spoken out against capitalism, against President Trump, against those who believe in protecting their nations’ borders. But he has come out in support of civil unions for people of the same sex.
“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” Francis has said. “I stood up for that.”
Perhaps Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is correct in claiming that Francis is allied with the Deep State and Communist China in moving the world toward globalism and socialism in the form of the Great Reset.
