Pope on vaccine: Needy, vulnerable must come first
Source: California Association of REALTORS® (C.A.R.).
VATICAN CITY >> Pope Francis made a Christmas Day plea for authorities to make COVID-19 vaccines available to all, insisting that the first in line should be the most vulnerable and needy, regardless of who holds the patents for the shots.
“Vaccines for everybody, especially for the most v ulnerable and needy,” who should be first in line, Francis said in off- thecuff remarks from his prepared text, calling the development of such vaccines “light of hope” for the world.
“We can’t let closed nationalisms impede us from living as the true human family that we are,” the pope said.
Francis called on the leaders of nations, businesses and international organizations to “promote cooperation and not competition, and to search for a solution for all.”
Amid a surge of coronavirus infections this fall in Italy, Francis broke with tradition for Christmas. Instead of delivering his “Urbi et Orbi” speech — Latin for “to the city and to the world” — outdoors
from the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, he read it from inside a cavernous hall at the Apostolic Palace, flanked by two Christmas trees with blinking lights.
Normally, tens of thousands of people would have crowded into St. Peter’s Square to receive the pope’s Christmas blessing and listen to his speech. But Italian measures to try to rein in holiday infections allow people to leave their homes on Christmas for only urgent reasons like work, health, visits to nearby loved ones or exercise close to home.
The pandemic’s repercussions on life dominated Francis’ reflections on the past year.
“At this moment in history, marked by the ecological crisis and grave economic and social imbalances only worsened by the coronavirus pandemic, it is all the more important for us to acknowledge one another as brothers and sisters,” Francis said.
Fraternity and compassion applies to people “even though they do not belong to my family, my ethnic group or my religion,” he said.
Francis prayed that the
birth of Jesus would inspire people to be “generous, supportive and helpful” to those in need, including those struggling with “the economic effects of the pandemic and women who have suffered domestic violence during these months of lockdown.”
Noting that the “American continent” was particularly hard-hit by COVID-19, he said that the pandemic compounded suffering, “often aggravated by the consequences of corruption and drug trafficking.” In particular he cited the suffering of the Venezuelan people.
On a day when Christians recall Jesus as a baby, Francis drew attention to the “too many children in all the world, especially in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, who still pay the high price of war.”
Among others he said sorely needed comfort at Christmas time were the Iraqi people, and “in particular the Yazidi, hard hit by the last years of war.” And, he said, “I cannot forgot the Rohingya people,” adding that he hoped that Jesus, “born poor among the poor, will bring hope in their suffering.”
Francis called on the leaders of nations, businesses and international organizations to “promote cooperation and not competition, and to search for a solution for all.”
Defying an otherwise struggling economy, California home sales remained red hot in November, breaking the 500,000 sales benchmark for the first time since
January 2009 and reaching the highest level in 15 years. Closed escrow sales of existing, single-family detached homes in California totaled a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 508,820 units in November. The statewide annualized sales figure represents what would be the total number of homes sold during 2020 if sales maintained the November pace throughout the year. It is adjusted to account for seasonal factors that typically influence home sales.
Making sense of the story:
• November sales rose 5.0 percent from 484,510 in October and were up
26.3 percent from a year ago, when
402,880 homes were sold on an annualized basis. The year-over-year, double-digit sales gain was the fourth consecutive and the largest yearly gain since May 2009.
• “Home-buying interest is at levels that we have not seen for years, setting the stage for a stronger-than-expected comeback that fully recovered all the sales that the market lost in the first half of the year due to the pandemic,” said 2021 C.A.R. President Dave Walsh.
November, down from October’s $711,300.
• Home prices, however, continued to gain on a year-over-year basis with the statewide median price surging 18.5 percent from $589,770 recorded last November.
• The double-digit increase from last year was the fourth in a row and the highest 12-month gain since February 2014. The gain was also higher than the six-month average of 9.7 percent observed between May 2020 and October 2020. and the distribution of the vaccine in the coming months,” said C.A.R. Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young.
• Meanwhile, low interest rates continue to fuel the optimism for home buying; just over one-fourth (27 percent) of the consumers believed that now is a good time to buy a home, up from 2019, when 24 percent said it was a good time to buy a home.