BRUSSELS (LifeSiteNews) — The president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) has thrown his full support behind a COVID-19 passport system for access to religious services throughout the continent, condemning resistance to such measures as a cause of “hurt and disorientation.”
According to a report in The Tablet, Luxembourg’s Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, S.J., who was raised to the Sacred College by Pope Francis in 2019, called for a stricter implementation of having to provide credentials proving inoculation with a COVID-19 shot before being permitted to attend religious gatherings, including Holy Mass, for Catholics throughout Europe.
On the basis that the largely benign omicron variant is spreading through the continent, Hollerich has urged Christians to take up the abortion-tainted jabs to help “save lives,” stating that “this green pass should welcome people to Mass.” Despite Hollerich’s notion, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published data last month showing the vast majority (around 79 percent) of omicron infections to have been in “fully vaccinated” individuals.
The prelate suggested that since Catholics in his native Luxembourg had “adhered in a convinced manner” to a law that has been in force “allowing only those vaccinated to participate in liturgies, except in the case of celebrations with fewer than 20 faithful,” that this restriction might then be extended to all Catholic churches.
“Some priests have objected, and this isn’t helping the search for a solution,” Hollerich complained, adding that priests who refuse to implement such coercive measures on their parish communities are a cause of “hurt and disorientation.”
The 63-year-old cardinal was made the general relator of the 2021–2023 Synod on Synodality, the theme for which is “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission,” taking after the heretical “Synodal Path” of the Catholic bishops in Germany.
The Jesuit cardinal has expressed “great respect” for the German example in the Synodal Path, stating his openness to ordaining women to the sacred priesthood and opening Holy Orders to married men.
LifeSiteNews contacted the media office of the COMECE for comment but did not immediately receive a reply.
Hollerich’s desire to see access to the sacraments restricted to the jabbed was echoed by liberal Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who, according to The Tablet, has supported mandatory inoculation as part of one’s “state responsibility for the common good.”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider in Kazakhstan has stood in opposition to such measures throughout the coronavirus crisis, resisting not only the mandating of receiving a COVID shot to remain in employment, for example, but strongly criticizing the permissibility of receiving the abortion-tainted shots on moral grounds, using the Vatican’s own documents as a basis for his arguments.