An upcoming Vatican health conference, titled “Unite to Prevent & Unite to Cure” and co-hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Cura Foundation, will not only place a significant focus on COVID-19 treatments and prevention but also provide a platform for promoting vaccines produced by large pharmaceutical companies.
The advocacy of the anti-COVID vaccines was already evident both by the names of some of the 114 speakers taking part in the online May 6-8 health summit as well as some of the grantors and supporters of the conference announced last week.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has led both the Trump and Biden administrations’ response to COVID-19, is a fervent advocate of vaccination, and is scheduled to give the opening talk of the conference entitled “Exploring the Mind, Body & Soul: How Innovation and Novel Delivery Systems Improve Human Health.”
Also speaking will be Stephane Bancel and Albert Bourla, respectively the CEOs of Moderna and Pfizer, two of the largest anti-COVID-19 vaccine producers, and Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, who has also strongly supported inoculation. Another speaker is David Feinberg, vice-president of Google Health, which in January committed $150 million to promote “COVID-19 vaccine education and equitable distribution to underserved communities” as well as further funding to other institutions, including the World Health Organization, in order to promote vaccination.
Msgr. Tomasz Trafny, the Vatican official organizing the conference, told the Register last week that the Vatican has no budget for the conference, whose funding consequently comes entirely from outside donors. These benefactors and supporters include Moderna, mentioned as a “Key Gold” supporter and grantor of the meeting, Celularity, United Therapeutics, and Sorrento Therapeutics. The conference’s “Key Grantors,” meanwhile, are the Templeton Foundation, which funds initiatives bringing science and faith together, and Helmsley Charitable Trust which believes in a “whole-person approach” to treating people with “type 1 diabetes and all chronic diseases.”
Further indications pointing to the wish of some participants to use the conference to promote vaccines in a Church setting came in a promotional email sent to the media this week by the Cura Foundation.
“The Catholic Church has come under scrutiny for questioning the use of the J&J vaccine but came out on the side of science saying it’s better to get any vaccine — and that is the point of this gathering,” read the April 22 email from a Cura Foundation PR Support official headed “Collaboration in Science & Faith – The Vatican, COVID vaccines, and science online conference – May 6-8”. The reference to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine apparently relates to the “moral concerns” raised by U.S. bishops about its production using cell lines derived from the tissue of aborted fetuses.