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Archbishop Thomas WenskiJoe Raedle / Staff / Getty

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March 25, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Thomas Wenski has doubled down on his approval of the use of Catholic churches as vaccination sites, in a letter to priests of the Archdiocese of Miami.

“So to the question, can the parish be used as a site for all the currently available vaccinations, the answer is YES,” the archbishop wrote. “To the question, should I advise my parishioners to receive any of the three vaccinations available, the answer is also a definite YES,” wrote Archbishop Wenski, as the Archdiocese of Miami reported.

San Lazaro Parish in Hialeah became the first church in the archdiocese of Miami to serve as a COVID-19 vaccination site in January, and was joined by Saint John Bosco Church in Miami’s Little Havana.

Many churches across the world, including Catholic churches, are increasingly being used as sites for abortion-tainted COVID-19 vaccine injections. Cardinal John Dew, the liberal Archbishop of Wellington, New Zealand, recently shared on social media that he had offered “churches and church facilities for vaccination centres” during a meeting with other New Zealand religious ministers to discuss “COVID-19 vaccinations, welfare and housing.”

Archbishop Wenski was the first U.S. bishop to publicly receive a COVID-19 vaccine. At the time, he explained to the Florida Catholic, “Hopefully my stepping up will encourage other people to get the vaccine as it becomes available to them.”

Wenski has considered the threat of the COVID-19 virus to be such that he disregarded Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s provision declaring religious services to be “essential services” during a stay-at-home order last year. Despite the ability to allow his priests to continue to provide the sacraments, Wenski had prohibited all Masses and even drive-through Confessions last year before Easter. He said at the time, “It is not prudent for parishes to plan any activity that would encourage people to leave their homes.”

Wenski aimed to clear up what he calls “confusion” over the issue of COVID-19 vaccinations by directing his priests to a talk by Fr. Alfred Cioffi, an Associate Professor of Biology and Bioethics, on COVID-19 virus and vaccines. 

Fr. Cioffi pointed out during the discussion with Florida Catholic editors that the COVID-19 virus has a “very high survival rate,” saying, “The rate is 95 to 97 percent survival. It doesn’t mean that if I get COVID which is the actual disease, that I’m gonna die automatically. Not at all.”

Some have pointed out that even this mortality rate is likely overblown, with one reason being that “if someone dies with Covid-19,” that is being counted as a Covid-19 death, as Dr. Deborah Birx explained last year during the early days of the crisis.

Fr. Cioffi goes on to say that protecting others is one reason there is a “responsibility” to take the COVID-19 vaccine. “In the measure I become vaccinated, then I stop the virus in its tracks from infecting other people,” said Cioffi, although he did not mention the CDF’s statement that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”

Florida Catholic editor Ana Rodriguez-Soto asked Fr. Cioffi, “How do I know the vaccine is not gonna be harmful? Are we guinea pigs?”

Fr. Cioffi replied, “No, no, no, it has been tested. Keep in mind it has FDA approval. Fast track means they try to eliminate as much bureaucracy as possible. Health was not compromised.”

Fr. Cioffi does not mention here that what is sometimes called “phase four” of clinical trials has been skipped in the process of approval for the COVID-19 vaccines, as chief FDA vaccine regulator Dr. Peter Marks has admitted. 

Dr. Marks explained during an FDA podcast that “In this case, it’s what happens after the vaccine is approved.” It involves looking at even larger numbers of people to make sure that we really understand how the vaccine works in either specific populations or that we understand any specific side effects that we think might be associated with the vaccine,” said Marks.

Dr. Marks was vaccine chief for Operation Warp Speed when it began, but then reverted back to his role as chief vaccine regulator at the FDA, despite the fact that then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn claimed in August that they had “drawn a very bright line at FDA between us and Operation Warp Speed because we’re the independent regulator.

A considerable number of doctors and individuals worldwide have expressed alarm about the reported and inherent dangers of mRNA COVID-vaccines in particular.

For example, governments and medical organizations have warned of the mRNA vaccines’ potentially harmful impact on unborn children and breastfeeding newborn children, as well as on fertility. World Health Organization officials have advised that pregnant women refrain from receiving the Moderna mRNA vaccine, and the U.K. government has cautioned that pregnant and breastfeeding women should not receive the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.

Even more troubling have been the reports of deaths and injuries following mRNA vaccination, such as those found in a re-analysis of published data from the Israeli Health Ministry by Dr. Hervé Seligmann and engineer Haim Yativ, which revealed that Pfizer’s mRNA experimental vaccine killed “about 40 times more (elderly) people than the disease itself would have killed” during a recent five-week vaccination period.

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