VATICAN CITY -- Visitors, tourists and employees who want to enter Vatican territory will be required beginning Oct. 1 to show proof of vaccination, recovery from the coronavirus or a negative COVID-19 test.

The Government of Ontario has not tipped its hand yet if it will institute mandatory vaccinations for teachers and staff, but education unions are trying to persuade Premier Doug Ford to make that choice.

“My body, my choice. No one is going to tell me what to do with my body.”

WASHINGTON -- There are large differences between religious groups in the United States in their attitudes toward getting the COVID-19 vaccine for themselves or for their children, according to a poll released Aug. 5 by the Public Religion Research Institute.

As of July 26 the City of Toronto has jabbed its citizens in the arm 4.3 million times. Provincially, 89.5 per cent of the eligible population of Ontario has been at least partially vaccinated. Globally, 3.5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed.

After a year of Zoom classes, Catholic colleges and universities across Canada are more than hoping for a fresh, in-person start this fall. As vaccinations roll out, they’re planning for it.

OTTAWA -- Offering a financial carrot to make sure Canadians get fully vaccinated would be a good path to herd immunity, according to a new policy paper from the religious think tank Cardus.

At the FCJ Refugee Centre, 300 people a day are getting vaccinated against COVID-19 — people who otherwise can’t get a jab.

In our corner of the country, we fancy ourselves as extremely welcoming and hospitable folk.

On Easter Sunday, I will receive my first COVID vaccine. When I heard the date, it felt like an intrusion on the day of celebrating the resurrection of Our Lord. Upon reflecting about it for a while, I decided that receiving the vaccine was a fine way to mark the liturgical feast.

The Sisters of St. Joseph, the Oblates and the Jesuits have joined with a long list of churches, unions and humanitarian organizations to ask Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to get behind an exception to international patent laws that would allow companies and countries to quickly produce cheaper, generic versions of COVID-19 vaccines.

VATICAN CITY -- The Office of Papal Charities has purchased enough doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to offer inoculations in Rome to 1,200 of “the poorest and most marginalized people who, because of their situation, are the most exposed” to the coronavirus.

A proposal aimed at getting vaccines into arms south of the equator ran up against demands for more information from rich countries, including Canada, at a Geneva meeting of the World Trade Organization committee on patent and intellectual property rights March 10 and 11.

There’s been a lot of moral/ethical debate about whether Catholics should avoid being injected with COVID-19 vaccines that were produced using cell lines derived from an abortion.

OTTAWA -- Canadian Catholics should get vaccinated against COVID-19 and they should take any vaccine that has been approved for use in Canada, Canada’s bishops said in a clarifying statement that came just days after initial advice on vaccines caused a political firestorm.