The Vatican on Monday urged Catholics to be vaccinated against COVID-19, considering that all vaccines developed are “morally acceptable”, including those obtained from cell lines from aborted fetuses in the last century.
A note published on Monday “on the morality of the application of certain anti-covid-19 vaccines” recalls the previous positions taken by the Church fifteen years ago, but aims to respond to specific inquiries received in recent months.
“It is morally acceptable to receive (covid-19) vaccines that have used in their development cell lines of aborted fetuses during research and production,” clarifies the note approved by the pope and published Monday by the Congregation for the Doctrine faith (guardian of dogma).
The Catholic Church explains that the link between a person who is currently vaccinated and aborted fetuses in the last century is “distant.”
Stem cells from aborted fetuses in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s – reproduced in laboratories for decades as “cell lines” – have been used by a large number of researchers at various stages of anti-vaccine development. -covid-19, for example by the Astra Zeneca, Moderna and Pfizer groups, according to the documentation available on the website of the European Institute of Bioethics.
In several countries around the world, especially in Latin America, but also in Australia and the United Kingdom, bishops have had intense debates about the dilemma of “moral ethical” vaccines.
The Vatican also stipulated on Monday that “the use of these vaccines does not mean the moral approval of abortion.”
It calls on pharmaceutical companies and government health agencies “to produce, approve, distribute and provide ethically acceptable vaccines that do not create problems of conscience.”
Although, as a general rule, vaccination must be “voluntary”, the Church emphasizes that it is an act for the “common good” and “protection of the weakest and most exposed”, a position completely opposite to that of anti-vaccine movements.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith finally evokes the “moral imperative” for the pharmaceutical industry, governments and international organizations to make covid-19 vaccines “accessible even to the poorest countries,” taking a recent call from Pope Francis.