Pope Francis on Wednesday warned against giving the rich the priority of receiving a coronavirus vaccine because he acknowledged the devastating inequality between rich and poor in the pandemic.
“How sad it would be if, for the COVID-19 vaccine, priority was given to the richest,” Francis said during his weekly audience broadcast live from his Vatican private library.
“It would be sad if this vaccine became the property of this nation as another, instead of universal and for everything,” said the leader of the 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide.
“The pandemic is in crisis. You do not get the same out of it – better yet worse, “the pontiff added in improvised additions to his planned speech.” We need to get out better. “
Once the outbreak is over, Francis said, the world cannot return to normal if it means social injustice and the degradation of the natural environment.
He stressed that it would be scandalous if all economic assistance, mostly with the use of public funds, ended with the revival of industries that did not help the indifferent or the environment.
“The pandemic has exposed the plight of the poor and the great inequality that reigns in the world,” Francis said.
“And the virus, though it makes no exceptions among persons, has found in its path devastating, great inequality and discrimination,” he said, adding, “and it has increased them.”
Francis said the response to the contagion should be two-fold. 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, he said, “We need to deal with a major virus, that of social injustice, of inequality of opportunity, of being marginalized and of lack of protection of the weakest.”
Pharmaceutical companies are racing to develop a vaccine against the disease, which has killed more than 782,000 people worldwide since its rise in China at the end of December.
Some governments have made agreements with companies, hoping to secure exclusive deliveries of the inoculations as they are developed.
On Tuesday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said governments “should prevent vaccinationalism.”
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