The Pope receives the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen

The Pope received today the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in the first meeting between the two and in which they discussed “good bilateral relations”, as well as the social consequences of the pandemic, among other issues, reported the Vatican.

Francisco and Von der Leyen met for 30 minutes in the Pontifical Library, after which the President of the Community Executive met with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Secretary for Relations with States, Paul Richard Gallagher, for about an hour.

In these conversations “the good bilateral relations, further developed thanks to the Structured Dialogue between the Parties and the initiatives underway for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the European Union” and “the issue of the human and social development of the continent, also in the perspective of the Conference on the Future of Europe”.

In addition, “some issues of common interest were addressed, such as the social consequences of the pandemic, migration and climate change, as well as recent events in the Middle East,” the Vatican said in a statement.

Von der Leyen presented the Pope with a photostatic copy of the 1950 Schuman Declaration and the two-volume History of the European Union, while the Pontiff offered him several papal texts, the Message for Peace and the Human Fraternity Document. Von der Layen chaired yesterday in Rome, together with the Italian Prime Minister, the G20 Health Summit, in which a long list of aid and donations to disadvantaged countries and the Covax program were announced, to provide vaccines against Covid to those same nations.

The president announced that the European Commission will donate at least 100 million doses of the vaccine to low- and middle-income countries before the end of the year and will promote an initiative endowed with one billion euros for the production of vaccines in Africa, which imports 99%.

On the 8th, Pope Francis urged a temporary suspension of the intellectual property rights of coronavirus vaccines, during the concert in Los Angeles (USA) of the “Vax Live” campaign to raise funds for the distribution of vaccines throughout the world. world.

In his message, the Pope called for “a spirit of justice that mobilizes us to ensure universal access to the vaccine and the temporary suspension of intellectual property rights,” while denouncing that “a variant of this virus is closed nationalism, that prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines”.

Precisely yesterday, at the G20 meeting, Von der Leyen referred to this “health nationalism”, assuring that the “Rome Declaration” reached by the twenty world powers means “reinforcing” multilateralism against the coronavirus pandemic and reducing inequality in access to the vaccine in poor countries.