VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Francis warned on Wednesday against any chance that rich people would be given priority over a coronavirus vaccine.
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FIL – In this file photo November 19, 2017, Pope Francis celebrates a mass in St. Peter’s Basilica near the Vatican. The pontiff on Wednesday, August 19, 2020, during his weekly audience at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, warned against any chance that rich people would be given priority over a coronavirus vaccine. (AP Photo / Andrew Medichini)
“The pandemic is a crisis. You are not getting the same out of it – even better than worse,” Francis said, adding impromptu remarks to his planned speech to his weekly audience.
“We need to get out better” of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pope said.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, the pope said, the world could not return to normalcy as normal social injustice and degradation of the natural environment meant.
Francis said: “How sad it would be if for the COVID-19 vaccine priority is given to the richest.”
He also said it would be scandalous if all economic assistance in the works, most of it with public funds, ends up with the revival of industries that do not help the poor or the environment.
“The pandemic has the dire situation of the poor and the great inequality that reigns in the world,” the pope said in his speech. ‘And the virus, though it makes no exceptions among persons, has found in its path devastating, great inequality and discrimination,’ ‘Francis said, adding,’ and it has increased them.
During the whole pandemic, many poor people, who often have jobs that they can not work from home, are less able to protect themselves against possible contamination in stay-at-home strategies, which are practiced by many peoples have been introduced to reduce the infection rate. Access to the best health care for the poor is often impossible in many parts of the world.
Francis said the response to the pandemic should be twofold. On the one hand, “it is indispensable to find the cure for such a small but great virus that is bringing the whole world to its knees.”
On the other hand, “we have to deal with a big virus, that of social injustice, of inequality of opportunity, of being marginalized and of lack of protection of the weakest,” Francis said.
Francis has devoted much of his papacy to highlighting the plight of those living on the margins, saying societies need to put them at the center of their attention.
Noting how much they would like to return to normalcy and restart economic activity, Francis cautiously exclaimed: “Sure, but this ‘normality’ should not involve social injustice and degradation of the environment.”
© Provided by Associated Press
FIL – In this file photo December 18, 2015, Francis pauses a baby at a charity, in Rome. The pontiff on Wednesday, August 19, 2020, during his weekly audience at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, warned against any chance that rich people would be given priority over a coronavirus vaccine. (L’Osservatore Romano / swimming pool photo via AP)
“Today we have the opportunity to build something else. For example, we can grow an economy of integrated development of the poor and not of welfare, ‘said the pope.
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