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(LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian Catholic priest called out vaccine passports as a “marking system” at the hands of government and vowed that such a system would “never happen” in his church.
“One thing I do know is that we cannot participate in any enforcement by government of any marking system that identifies clean and unclean leper and non-leper, vaccinated or non-vaccinated, to do that would be for us to surrender to the powers of this world, that which only rests with God,” said Fr. Stefano Penna, pastor of St. Paul’s Catholic Co-Cathedral in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in a homily this past Sunday.
“This vaccine passport for entrance into the worship of God. I don’t ask people when they come for communion if they’re in a state of grace. And brothers and sisters, in terms of eternity, that is much more important than the condition of their body. That will never happen in this church, ever.”
Penna’s homily was posted on the Countdown to the Kingdom website, but as of today, it has not yet been posted to his YouTube channel nor the webpage of St. Paul’s Catholic Co-Cathedral.
In Fr. Penna’s sermon, he hinted that his message could be “canceled” while questioning a recent mandate by a Canadian archbishop who banned those who have not had the COVID jabs from attending Mass.
“I hear that some, for whatever reasons, I cannot judge leaders in the church have acquiesced to this vaccine passport and this will never get on air because they’ll be canceled,” Penna said.
There is no ‘place in government for love’
Penna is well known in western Canada for preaching with a firm conviction in the defense of the unborn. In the past, he has not shied away from speaking the traditional moral truths taught by the Catholic Church as well as those in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
In his sermon Sunday, Penna said there is no “place in government for love” and called out the hypocrisy of government jab mandates while society murders the “unborn.”
“So we murder the unborn, the vulnerable, a whole kind of humanity. Down syndrome, people killed, murdered. I’m going to trust that structure to teach me about the care of others? They have taken the things that the church has given to the world, hospitals and schools and social care institutions, and they have adopted them beautifully, but without love, because there’s no place in government for love,” Penna said.
“And what does St. Paul teach us, if you have all the good deeds in the world and power and the best social safety net but are without love, you’re an empty gong. I listen, sisters and brothers, to gongs. Why participate in that discussion? The gong’s sound with enforcement, the gong’s sound to continue to divide with power, with all kinds of labels. We are faced with something that I think is quite unprecedented. The compulsion to take a vaccine being forced upon a people.”
Last Friday, Archbishop Valery Vienneau of Moncton, New Brunswick said that all people over age 12 who attend religious gatherings in a church “must be doubly vaccinated” against COVID-19.
Vienneau said he was going along with government orders from New Brunswick Minister of Health Dorothy Shepherd, who asked that all members of churches be “fully vaccinated.”
Recently, Ottawa-area priest Fr. Mark Goring said that clergymen are commanded to do the Lord’s work and not to “set aside the divine command for government dictates.”
The COVID-19 crisis shut down many Canadian churches for months on end. After being allowed to remain open for a short time, many provinces in Canada have again placed restrictions on places of worship.
The COVID-19 injections approved for emergency use in Canada, including the Pfizer jab for ages 12 and up, all have connections to cells derived from aborted babies.
All four have also been associated with possible severe side effects such as blood clots, rashes, miscarriages, and even heart attacks in young, healthy men.
The list of FDA-recognized adverse events has grown from severe anaphylactic reactions to include fatal thrombotic events, the inflammatory heart condition myocarditis, and neurologically disabling diseases like Guillain Barré Syndrome. Meanwhile, the CDC reported a COVID-19 infection survival rate of greater than 99.95% for those under age 50.
Although the Vatican itself has allowed Catholics to take the jabs, many Catholics, including high-ranking clergy, feel compelled, as is their right, to not take the COVID injections because of how the vaccines were made and their experimental nature.