Pope Francis calls for Covid-19 vaccines for everyone in Christmas Day message

Pope Francis has placed a request on Christmas Day for authorities to make Covid-19 vaccines available to all, insisting that those first in line must be the most vulnerable and needy, regardless of who owns the patents.

“Vaccines for all, especially the most vulnerable and needy,” Francis said in impromptu remarks outside of his prepared text, calling the development of such vaccines a “light of hope” for the world.

“We cannot allow closed nationalisms to prevent us from living as the true human family that we are,” he said.

He called on the leaders of nations, companies and international organizations to “promote cooperation and not competition, and seek a solution for all.”

Amid a wave of coronavirus infections this fall in Italy, Francis broke with Christmas tradition.

Instead of delivering his speech Urbi et Orbi – in Latin “to the city and to the world” – from the central loggia of St. Peter’s Square, he read it from inside a cavernous room in the Apostolic Palace, flanked by two trees. tree with flickering lights.

Normally, tens of thousands of people would have crowded into St. Peter’s Square to receive the Christmas blessing and speech, but Italian measures to curb Christmas infections only allow people to leave their homes at Christmas for urgent reasons like work. , health, visits to nearby places. loved ones or exercising close to home.

The impact of the pandemic on life dominated Francisco’s reflections on the past year.

“At this moment in history, marked by the ecological crisis and serious economic and social imbalances that have only been aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic, it is even more important that we recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters,” he said.

Fraternity and compassion apply to people “even if they are not from my family, my ethnic group or my religion,” he said.

Francis prayed that the birth of Jesus would inspire people to be “generous, supportive, and helpful” to those in need, including people struggling with “the economic effects of the pandemic and women who have suffered domestic violence during these months of confinement”.