Verona, Italy, Nov 30, 2021 / 04:00 am

Commenting on protests against Italy’s vaccine rules, the Vatican’s Secretary of State said that the Church’s message is clear that vaccination is an “act of love.”

In an interview with Vatican News published on Nov. 28, Cardinal Pietro Parolin was asked about “No Vax” and “No Pass” demonstrations in cities across Italy.

“No Vax” refers to demonstrators who object to COVID-19 vaccines, while “No Pass” protesters focus on the Italian government’s decision in October to require all workers to possess a Green Pass proving that the holder has been vaccinated, tested negative every 48 hours, or recently recovered from COVID-19.

Parolin was asked specifically to comment on the actions of a priest, Father Floriano Pellegrini, who blessed the crowd of more than 1,000 demonstrators before a “No Vax” march in Verona on Nov. 27.

“It seems to me that the message is clear and well known, there is no need to repeat it, it is what the Holy Father has always said,” said Parolin, who was attending an event promoting the Church’s social doctrine in the northern Italian city where the march occurred.

“I refer to his statements, his admonitions, to experience the reality and the issue of the vaccine with a sense of responsibility.”

He went on: “I believe this is what it is: a responsible freedom. Because many call for freedom, but freedom without responsibility is empty, indeed it becomes slavery.”

“Therefore, responsibility towards oneself, because we see how the No Vax [people] are affected by the disease, and responsibility, above all, towards others, which then the pope summed up with this beautiful expression that I like so much but that, in the end, goes in this sense, of an act of love.”

Italy was one of the countries worst hit by the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. The nation of almost 60 million people has recorded more than 5 million COVID cases and 133,000 related deaths as of Nov. 30, according to the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Almost 73% of the population is vaccinated.

The Italian authorities have announced plans to introduce a “super Green Pass,” entering into force on Dec. 6. The move will bar unvaccinated people from dining indoors at restaurants, going to the gym, visiting museums and other tourist sites, or attending weddings or other public ceremonies until at least Jan. 15.

The new rules will remove the possibility for people to offer proof of a negative test within the past 48 hours to enter the venues, meaning that only those who have been vaccinated or recently recovered from COVID-19 will be allowed access.

Father Pellegrini, a priest from Coi, a hamlet in the northern Italian province of Belluno, has gained media attention for his opposition to the Green Pass.

Pellegrini has been supporting a dock workers’ strike in the port city of Trieste in protest against the government’s COVID rules.

The priest of the Diocese of Belluno-Feltre wrote an open letter to the Italian bishops, questioning their willingness to protect religious freedom from state power.

“For a year and a half now, the vast majority of the Italian Catholic faithful have been disconcerted and scandalized by your incomprehensible silence, by your lack of ability to indicate the path of faith,” Pellegrini wrote in September.

”You seem, for all intents and purposes, salt that has lost its flavor and, as Christ says, ‘is good only to be thrown away and trampled on by men.’ You have yielded to almost everything that the Italian government has asked of you and continues to suggest and you have transformed the Church from a divine reality into a society manipulated by the government.”

The priest, who is a champion to the Trieste dockers, has criticized Pope Francis for promoting vaccination and regards Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the controversial former apostolic nuncio to the United States who is also an outspoken critic of vaccine mandates, as a “hero.”