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VATICAN CITY: The Vatican told Roman Catholics on Monday (December 21) that it was morally acceptable to use COVID-19 vaccines even if their production employed cell lines extracted from tissues of aborted fetuses.
A note from the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the use of such vaccines was allowed as long as there were no alternatives.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have some connection to cell lines that originated with abortion tissue in the past century, according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which issued a separate note for American Catholics last week. .
READ: COVID-19 vaccine allowed for Muslim use, life preservation is a key consideration – MUIS
The Vatican note said that the granting of moral legitimacy was related to the principle of “different degrees of responsibility for cooperation in evil.”
This meant that because the pandemic is such a serious danger, such vaccines “can be used in good conscience with the knowledge that it does not constitute a formal cooperation with abortion from which the cells used in the production of vaccines are derived,” it said. the note.
In the absence of safe vaccines made from other sources, “it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process.”
The US bishops said the vaccines used cell lines taken from tissue obtained from two abortions that took place in the 1960s and 1970s and have often replicated since.
The Vatican note said that the use of such vaccines “does not in itself constitute a legitimation, not even indirect, of the practice of abortion.”
He urged the pharmaceutical industry to develop completely ethical vaccines and to governments and international organizations to make them accessible to the poorest nations.
The Vatican note said that while the use of vaccines was voluntary, “the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed.”
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