Pope Francis issued a powerful appeal urging people to receive the approved COVID‑19 vaccines, calling vaccination “an act of love.” Many bishops echoed the same message to their flocks, repeating that receiving the vaccine was “an act of love.”
At the parish level, this message was reinforced in concrete ways. My own parish hosted a COVID vaccination clinic on church property. At the same time, priests in our diocese were forbidden from administering the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick to those who needed it most. They were also ordered not to sign any religious‑exemption requests for parishioners who faced the unjust threat of losing their jobs.
I attended Mass at a parish that implemented separate seating arrangements for vaccinated and unvaccinated parishioners — a division I had never imagined seeing inside a Catholic church.
Priests were further instructed to use hand sanitizer after distributing Communion on the tongue. This meant that the Blessed Sacrament was often touched with fingers still wet from sanitizer. Ironically, the labeling on these products clearly stated that they did not kill the Coronas virus.
