Speaking on the Covid-19 pandemic and a potential vaccine, Pope Francis on Wednesday said the world's wealthiest should not be prioritized over the poor.
"It would be sad if, for the vaccine for Covid-19, priority were to be given to the richest!" the Pope said during his weekly general audience. "It would be sad if this vaccine were to become the property of this nation or another, rather than universal and for all."
"And what a scandal it would be if all the economic assistance we are observing—most of it with public money—were to focus on rescuing those industries that do not contribute to the inclusion of the excluded, the promotion of the least, the common good, or the care of creation," he continued.
The Pope's remarks came as the world's reported positive cases of the virus passed the 22 million mark, with the Americas accounting for 64% of global deaths from Covid-19.
Acknowledging that the pandemic has "exposed the plight of the poor and the great inequality that reigns in the world," the religious leader said global citizens must work to rectify those injustices as the world recovers.
"On the one hand, it is essential to find a cure for this small but terrible virus which has brought the whole world to its knees," he said. "On the other, we must also cure a larger virus, that of social injustice, inequality of opportunity, marginalization, and the lack of protection for the weakest."
Drug manufacturers developing Covid-19 vaccines have come under scrutiny for projected costs of their potential products and political debates continue about whether a vaccine should be made available to the public free of charge.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Tuesday that he had made a deal with drugmaker AstraZeneca to supply a potential Covid-19 vaccine to the entire country's population, though details are scant.
But Pope Francis warned that the global response to the virus should not fall along ideological lines.
"This is not a political option; nor is it an ideological option, a party option… no," he said. "The preferential option for the poor is at the center of the Gospel."
On life after Covid-19, Pope Francis declared that a new "normality" must include transforming systemic injustices, not simply maintain the status quo.
"We are all worried about the social consequences of the pandemic," he said. "Many people want to return to normality and resume economic activities. Certainly, but this 'normality' should not include social injustices and the degradation of the environment."
"The pandemic is a crisis, and we do not emerge from a crisis the same as before," the Pope continued. "Either we come out of it better, or we come out of it worse. We must come out of it better, to counter social injustice and environmental damage. Today we have an opportunity to build something different."
This article was originally published by Common Dreams and was written by Lisa Newcomb. You can read it here.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.