Canada's Catholic bishops call on the faithful to avoid two covid-19 vaccines for moral reasons

A woman receives the Pfizer vaccine against covid in Halifax, Canada, last Tuesday.Andrew Vaughan / AP

The Canadian government and the different provincial authorities paid tribute this Thursday to the more than 22,000 people who have died in the country from covid-19, one year after the World Health Organization declared the state of pandemic.

On Wednesday, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) recommended to its faithful, in a statement, to avoid the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines on the grounds that they "use abortion-derived cell lines in their development, production and clinical trials ”.

The repercussions were immediate.

Johnson & Johnson said its vaccine is made "using a harmless cold-like virus into which we insert a piece of coronavirus spike protein."

Although it did not directly refer to the bishops' statement, the laboratory clarified that the adenovirus is cultured "using what is called an immortalized cell culture and then extracted and purified."

"There are several types of cell lines that were created decades ago using fetal tissue and that are widely used in medical production, but the cells in those lines are currently clones of the initial cells, not the original tissue," he explained.

Christian Dubé, Quebec's Minister of Health, was more direct than the laboratory.

“I strongly denounce this statement of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

I invite all Quebecers to trust our experts and those from other parts of the world ”.

For Howard Njoo, deputy director of the Public Health Agency of Canada, the bishops' recommendation was "disappointing."

Canada has so far approved vaccines from Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech.

The authorities of each province decide which antigen to administer based on the available doses and the opinions of experts.

The CCCB emphasizes that getting vaccinated “can be an act of charity that takes into account the need to care for others”, but that receiving certain vaccines implies an ethical dilemma for some individuals.

"If we had a choice, we should order the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine instead of the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccine," the group of bishops said.

"But if we cannot choose, the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccine can be used in good conscience knowing that the use of these vaccines does not constitute a gesture of formal cooperation with abortion," he added.

In early March, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also recommended that its faithful choose an antigen other than Johnson & Johnson, due to the “moral permissibility of using vaccines developed, tested and / or produced with the help of lines of cells derived from abortions ”.

However, some bishops have not supported this suggestion.

Such is the case of Robert McElroy, at the head of the diocese of San Diego.

In Canada, opinions also vary.

Marc Lépine, Archbishop of Montreal, told

that he disassociates himself from the recommendation of the CCCB and that he advocates the use of all vaccines authorized by believers.

In December, the Vatican had spoken out about the dilemmas related to the covid-19 vaccination and the cell lines derived from supposedly aborted photos.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stipulated in a note that "the moral duty to avoid passive material cooperation is not mandatory when there is a serious danger."

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