ROME (LifeSiteNews) – To visit the Vatican Museums now, you must either have been inoculated with the COVID-19 jabs or have recently recovered from the coronavirus itself.
Vatican City State has announced that visitors to its museums and gardens may no longer present a negative COVID test for entry but must be either jabbed or carry certification of COVID-19 recovery.
The exclusion of a COVID-19 test option is new to Italy’s “Super Green Pass,” which the Vatican began requiring of “visitors to the Vatican Museums, the Vatican Gardens, the Gardens of the Pontifical Villas and the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo” on January 10. The new mandate was announced January 5 in a decree issued by Archbishop Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State.
The decree also extends the “Super Green Pass” requirement to “participants in conferences, seminars and any similar event,” as well as to those eating indoors.” It notes that the maximum capacity for conferences and similar events has been reduced to 35 percent. The Super Green Pass was imposed on all Vatican employees just prior to Christmas.
In addition, as of January 10, “all business trips” of Vatican employees have been suspended, except for those specially authorized, such as those “that cannot be postponed.”
The decree also announces that FFP2 masks — the European “equivalent of an N95” — are required in all indoor places in the Vatican. It reiterates that masking protection is still required outdoors, but that FFP2 masks are not required outdoors.
The Vatican’s decision to enforce Italy’s Super Green Pass is an independent one, as the Vatican City State is not subject to Italian law.
The indoor FFP2 mask requirement has already caused pilgrims to be turned away from a Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica, in violation of the Code of Canon Law, which states that “any baptized person not prohibited by law can and must be admitted to holy communion” (Can. 912) and that “entry into a church is to be free and gratuitous” (Can. 1221).
The Vatican’s enforcement of the Super Green Pass marks a heightened exclusion of those who will not or cannot receive a COVID-19 shot, even for health reasons, from some of the most esteemed tourist sites in the world, such as the Sistine Chapel.
LifeSite’s Kennedy Hall has noted that “the recovery from COVID option only lasts six months, before it would be necessary to prove again that one has recovered.”
Cardinal Pietro Parolin told the National Catholic Register on January 9 that an exemption for Vatican employees who object to the COVID jabs’ connection to abortion-tainted fetal cell lines “seems not to be justified.”
Many are questioning the usefulness of current vaccination requirements, such as that wrapped into the Super Green Pass, considering that the omicron variant has been described by its identifying doctor and others as “mild,” and that it is now widely admitted that the jabbed can and are being infected with omicron.