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In his Christmas Day address, Pope Francis called on political and business leaders to make coronavirus vaccines available to all, with the most vulnerable and needy at the head of the line.
“I ask everyone, heads of state, companies and international organizations to promote cooperation and not competition, to find a solution for everyone, vaccines for everyone, especially for the most vulnerable and needy in all areas of the planet,” said Francis .
“The most vulnerable and needy must come first,” he said in the Vatican’s Hall of Blessings, with some 50 masked employees present for his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” message, “to the city and to the world.”
“We cannot put ourselves before others, putting market forces and patent laws before the laws of love and the health of humanity,” added the Pope. “We cannot allow closed nationalisms to prevent us from living as the true human family that we are.”
He also appeared to criticize so-called “vaccine nationalism,” which UN officials fear will worsen the pandemic if poor nations receive the vaccines in the end, and apparently targeted people who have refused to wear masks.
“And we also cannot allow the virus of radical individualism to triumph over us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters,” Francis said as he was flanked by two Christmas trees with blinking lights.
In his call for global unity, he said that “at this moment in history, marked by the ecological crisis and serious economic and social imbalances only aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic, it is all the more important that we recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters” .
Noting that the “American continent” was particularly affected by COVID-19, he said that the pandemic exacerbated the suffering, “often compounded by the consequences of corruption and drug trafficking.”
One day when Christians remember Jesus as a baby, Francis called attention to “too many children around the world, especially in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, who still pay the high price of war.”
Normally, thousands would have gathered in St. Peter’s Square to hear the Pope’s speech, but Italian authorities are allowing people to leave their homes at Christmas only for urgent reasons such as work, health and visits to close loved ones.
With pole cables
