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VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Wednesday described the COVID-19 pandemic as a tough “lady” foreman who must be obeyed, but neither he nor his closest associates wore masks in his general audience.
At the beginning of the indoor audience, Francisco apologized to the people for not coming down from the marble stage.
“I will stay here. I would very much like to come down and greet each of you, but we have to keep our distance,” he told the crowd of several hundred, almost all wearing masks.
“If I go down, immediately people will form groups … and this goes against the care, the precautions that we must take in the face of this lady called COVID, who is doing us a lot of harm,” he said.
The Pope and most of the helpers and translators on stage did not wear masks. The Swiss Guards and official photographers on stage wore masks, but the bishops and priests who were greeting the pope closely removed their masks when they approached him.
Thirteen Swiss Guards and a resident of the guest house where the Pope lives recently tested positive for COVID-19.
The Pope, who had part of a lung removed due to illness when he was young, has been criticized, especially on social media, for not always wearing a mask in public.
On October 20, he wore a mask for several hours at a prayer service in Rome with other religious leaders, removing it only when he spoke. Last Saturday, no one in the Pope’s private library was wearing a mask when he spoke to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his delegation.
In a videoconference with reporters Tuesday, Father Augusto Zampini, a member of a Vatican commission that the Pope established to advise him on the social effects of the crisis, acknowledged Francis’ inconsistency.
“We are trying to convince him, we are almost there,” Zampini said.
(Edited by Janet Lawrence)
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