VATICAN (UCAN): “The dignity of the human person is the one thing that you cannot compromise on,” Peter Cardinal Turkson, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Human Development, told the Davos World Economic Forum’s virtual panel on poverty alleviation on January 28. The cardinal pointed out that concerns about “profit, financial gains, economics … tend to push the person into the background.”
The Davos Agenda summit was held online from January 25 to 29 and the cardinal participated in a session entitled, Stopping poverty from going viral.
Cardinal Turkson, who heads the Vatican Covid-19 Commission, pushed for easy availability of vaccines as “a matter of justice.”
He told the Davos forum: “The human person is central to all of this, not simply as the beneficiary, but is also the crucial actor. He must change his lifestyle, he must change his way of thinking, and develop a heart for the other person to be able to feel for the well-being of the other.”
The cardinal said, “If that does not happen, we may have all of the structures that we want … but if the one at the wheel, at the helm of things, does not change attitude, morality, ethical considerations, and all of that, not much will change.”
The Vatican’s Covid-19 Commission has been connecting people in different countries to evaluate and promote access to health care, job security and pandemic vaccines, the cardinal said, suggesting that vaccines be produced locally.
“Several countries do have the facilities. They do have pharmaceutical (infrastructure) to be able to produce this and if this was done locally I think that the impact of the coronavirus will be very much tamed or diminished,” he said.
According to reports, the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic pushed millions of people below the poverty line in wealthy countries and will drive 150 million people in developing countries to extreme poverty in 2021, the Catholic News Agency reported on January 29.
