Miami Archbishop receives COVID-19 vaccine

Miami Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski received a COVID-19 vaccine to help demonstrate to the public that it is safe and morally acceptable, according to The Catholic Sun.

There has been debate as to whether the vaccines should be taken on moral grounds, since they are derived from a cell line of an aborted fetus. The bishops of the U.S. have released a statement explaining why receiving the vaccine is ethically sound: the connection to evil is remote and the good to be achieved by widespread vaccination legitimate and needful.

“As we have learned before, other types of vaccines have done great things for protecting us over the years,” Archbishop Wenski said.

He received his vaccine as Florida public health officials administered COVID-19 doses Dec. 16 at St. John’s Nursing Center, located near Fort Lauderdale on the north campus of Catholic Health Services of the Archdiocese of Miami, The Catholic Sun shared.

Catholic Health Services operates 38 facilities in Southern Florida, and will encourage all of its employees to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

“I wanted to show today, first of all, that we have confidence in the vaccine and that we don’t have any ethical concerns about the vaccine,” Archbishop Wenski told the Florida Catholic, Miami’s archdiocesan newspaper. “Hopefully, my stepping up will encourage other people to get the vaccine as it becomes available to them.”

St. John’s staff and nursing home residents were offered the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized for emergency use Dec. 11.

Each state is beginning to implement its own vaccine distribution plan. Nursing home residents and health care workers are scheduled to be among the first to receive the vaccines in many states.