Pope Francis gives Vatican employees flu medicine for Christmas

December 9, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

A man holds a box of Vicks DayQuil and NyQuil acetaminophen pills at Walmart in Albuquerque, New Mexico Nov. 2, 2020. Credit: Giovanni Nastukov/Shutterstock

Vatican City, Dec 9, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Christmas at the Vatican will be a little different this year — and in keeping with the times, Pope Francis has eschewed a traditional gift for something a bit more practical.

Rather than a bottle of sparkling wine and the traditional Italian holiday cake panettone, the pope’s Christmas present to Vatican employees is over-the-counter flu medicine, according to Italian media.

Pope Francis is giving each of his nearly 4,000 employees five boxes of Vicks day and nighttime flu medicine with acetaminophen, Il Messaggero reported.

It is thought that the idea for the useful winter gift was suggested by the man responsible for distributing the pope’s alms, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who is known for his hands-on approach to helping Rome’s poor and homeless.

The custom Christmas gift is being distributed as the Vatican faces more financial losses with a new closure of the Vatican Museums, the city state’s largest income stream.

Since Nov. 3, the Italian government has decreed that all museums in the country will be closed to the public at least through Jan. 15, 2021, as one of the measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

To date, the Vatican has had a number of COVID-19 cases among employees and residents. Since March, at least 13 people connected to the city state had tested positive for the coronavirus, mostly in the spring.

Eleven members of the Swiss Guards contracted the virus in October. The Vatican press office has not said if there are currently any active cases.

Last week, Pope Francis’ charity brought free flu vaccines and coronavirus tests to homeless people living in a town outside Rome.

The Vatican ambulance carried the medical supplies to the small seaside town of Torvaianica, and health staff from the papal charity office administered the flu shots and COVID-19 tests to 35 people in a courtyard outside the local parish.

If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!

Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

Related Articles

No Picture
News Briefs

Pope Francis says Paul VI will be canonized this year

February 17, 2018 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Feb 17, 2018 / 08:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his annual Lenten meeting with the priests of Rome last week, Pope Francis confirmed that Blessed Pope Paul VI will be made a saint sometime this year.

“Paul VI will be a saint this year,” the Pope said Feb. 15, at the end of a long question and answer session with priests of Rome. The text of the private meeting was published by the Vatican Feb. 17.

During the meeting, Francis gave lengthy answers to four questions from priests. Afterward, texts containing meditations by Pope Paul VI, a gift from the Pope, were handed out to each of the priests. “I saw it and I loved it,” Francis said about the book.

“There are two [recent] Bishops of Rome already saints,” he continued, referring to St. John XXIII and St. John Paul II, who were canonized together in April 2014.

Besides Blessed Pope Paul VI, he noted that John Paul I’s cause for beatification is also ongoing. “And Benedict and I,” he added, are “on the waiting list: pray for us!”

According to Vatican Insider, Feb. 6 the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the second miracle needed for the canonization of Bl. Pope Paul VI by a unanimous vote.

The next step is for Pope Francis to also give his approval, with an official decree from the Vatican. Then the date for the canonization can be set. The canonization could take place in October of this year, during the Synod of Bishops on the youth, Vatican Insider reported.

The miracle attributed to the cause of Paul VI is the healing of an unborn child in the fifth month of pregnancy. The case was brought forward in 2014 for study.

The mother, originally from the province of Verona, Italy, had an illness that risked her own life and the life of her unborn child, and was advised to have an abortion.

A few days after the beatification of Paul VI on Oct. 19, 2014, she went to pray to him at the Shrine of Holy Mary of Grace in the town of Brescia. The baby girl was later born in good health, and remains in good health today.

The healing was first ruled as medically inexplicable by the medical council of the congregation last year, while the congregation’s consulting theologians agreed that the healing occurred through the late pope’s intercession.
 

[…]

1 Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

All comments posted at Catholic World Report are moderated. While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published. Thank you.


*