Pope urges shots for all in Americas

Getting vaccine ‘an act of love’, Francis says in video

Pope Francis is encouraging people in the Americas to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

The head of the Catholic Church is joining six cardinals and archbishops from the United States and Latin America in a video to encourage everyone to get vaccinated, calling it “an act of love.”

“Thanks to God’s grace and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from COVID-19,” the Argentineborn pontiff says in his native Spanish in a short video produced by the Ad Council and the COVID Collaborative.

“They bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we collaborate with one another,” he added.

In the three-minute video, “Unity Across the Americas,” Catholic officials representing the U.S., Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru and Brazil join the 84-year-old pope to convey a message that vaccines bring hope and that they are the best way to protect people from a deadly disease.

“Getting the vaccines that are authorized by the respective authorities is an act of love. And helping the majority of people to do so is an act of love. Love for oneself, love for our families and friends, and love for all peoples,” Francis said.

“Love is also social and political. … It is universal, always overflowing with small individual gestures capable of transforming and improving societies,” he said.

The PSA, delivered in Spanish, Portuguese and English, was made in cooperation with the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development, and it’s a part of the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative’s groundbreaking COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative.

COVID-19 cases have been increasing across the Americas.

However, while about 72% of adults in the U.S. have received at least one dose of the vaccines, rates of individuals fully vaccinated elsewhere range from only 5.5% (Honduras) to 30% (El Salvador).