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ROME – Pope Francis on Friday called on world leaders, businesses and international organizations to help ensure that the most vulnerable and in need have access to newly developed coronavirus vaccines.
In a year when the pandemic plunged the world into economic and social uncertainty, the Pope used his annual Christmas address to argue that the widespread suffering should compel reflection on common humanity, including the way launches are handled. of vaccines.
“We cannot allow the various forms of nationalism to enclose themselves to prevent us from living as the truly human family that we are,” the Pope said.
“Nor can we allow the virus of radical individualism to take hold of us and make us indifferent to the suffering of other brothers and sisters,” he said. “I cannot put myself ahead of the rest, letting the law of the market and patents prevail over the law of love and the health of humanity.”
Nearly a quarter of the world’s population may not have access to the Covid-19 vaccine until at least 2022, according to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal.
Speaking from a grandiose room within the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican rather than to the tens of thousands usually gathered in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said that the world faced a “moment in history, marked only by the ecological crisis and the grave economic and social imbalances aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic “.
Over the past 10 months, Francis has said that the coronavirus offers humanity the opportunity to make radical changes and reevaluate its priorities, remedying social injustice and the marginalization of the poor. In an encyclical, the most authoritative form of papal teaching, published in October, he criticized the lack of global cooperation in response to the pandemic.
This year, all over the world, Christians reduced or reinvented Christmas traditions.
A choral concert was held at Notre-Dame de Paris, where a fire nearly destroyed the cathedral in 2019, but this season the annual French tradition was carried out without the regular audience.
Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral in London is normally a festive event with pomp and pageantry, but this year it was scaled down, and the service was streamed online rather than attending in person.
“In the darkness of this pandemic, many of our comfortable assumptions are being shaken,” said Cardinal Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster. “Here we are, celebrating Christmas, but deprived of the greetings, hugs, kisses and handshakes that normally fill this day.”
He said the pandemic had put family ties to the test and lamented that some people in nursing homes and hospitals who longed to see their loved ones “would disappear from absolute loneliness.”
In the Holy Land, the thousands of pilgrims who usually flock to Bethlehem to celebrate were absent. The suspension of international flights and other restrictions meant that few were able to reach the Church of the Nativity, which was built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was born.
The Christmas Eve Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City was moderate, with attendance limited to 25 percent of capacity, or 500 people.
At the Vatican, Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica was brought forward two hours to comply with the Italian government’s 10 p.m. curfew.
The Pope traditionally uses his Christmas Day address to focus attention on the conflicts or natural disasters that have plagued the planet in the past year.
And he did it again on Friday, asking the world to remember the suffering of so many in 2020, from the Yazidis in Iraq to the Rohingya in Myanmar. He said it was the duty of all citizens of the world to help end violence and alleviate suffering.
But it was the pandemic that greatly shaped the world this year and the pandemic, he said, that would allow humanity to really consider what global cooperation can accomplish.
At the end of his speech, the bells rang and resounded in an empty St. Peter’s Square.
Elisabetta povoledo reported from Rome, and Marc santora From london.
