(LifeSiteNews) — Swiss Bishop Marian Eleganti said the Catholic hierarchy’s embrace of COVID restrictions was a “declaration of bankruptcy of faith” and lamented that the COVID shots have caused “many harmful side effects,” including “turbo cancer,” excess deaths, and premature births.
During a video interview with LifeSiteNews journalist Andreas Wailzer in German, Bishop Eleganti was asked what he thought about the Austrian bishops’ support for the country’s general COVID jab mandate.
READ: Austrian bishops announce support for gov’t mandatory COVID jab policy, defying Vatican decree
“For me, that was clearly a fall from grace,” the former bishop of Chur said.
He said that “informed consent” and autonomous decision over one’s own body was the “basic dogma” in medical ethics during the past decades and noted that the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Luis Ladaria had declared that there must not be forced COVID injections.
“Nevertheless, the Pope imposed [a shot mandate] on all employees in the Vatican as head of state. Otherwise, they would have lost their jobs or been given another one,” Bishop Eleganti stated.
“So, for me, that was clearly an injustice.”
“We now know, and this is coming to light more and more worldwide, that we simply cannot ignore the fact that these measures were not evidence-based, that the vaccinations did not guarantee this protection against transmission, that there was no ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated.’”
“Today we have turbo-cancer phenomena; we have excess mortality since the vaccination programs in all countries. We have a decline in births due to premature births and so on.”
“So much injustice happened, and there were so many harmful side effects,” he continued. “Today we have turbo-cancer phenomena; we have excess mortality since the vaccination programs in all countries. We have a decline in births due to premature births and so on.”
READ: The Telegraph admits COVID shots may have helped cause over 3 million excess deaths
“There are many parameters that point in the same direction, that a lot has been done wrong. The masks were not evidence-based, and so on. That was also known, and these were political decisions.”
The Swiss bishop also criticized the role of the globalist U.N. and WHO in stripping away national sovereignty and acting “like a world government.”
READ: Japan’s most senior cancer doctor: COVID shots are ‘essentially murder’
“The WHO is also financed by private foundations such as Bill Gates and others,” Bishop Eleganti said. “And these institutions are not democratically legitimized, and they are also at the mercy of the powerful of high finance.”
“And that’s where you have to be critical, and nations must not give up their sovereignty so that so few people in the back room suddenly decide for the whole world like a world government and impose something on all countries that remains highly controversial, also in the future.”
READ: UN secretary-general calls for ‘global governance’ in ‘new multipolar order’ at 2024 Davos summit
The bishop reiterated that the Church “did not play a good role” during the COVID crisis.
He said that bishops and other Church leaders showed their lack of faith in the supernatural by shutting down public Easter celebrations and the healing springs in Lourdes, removing the holy water from the churches, and treating the Eucharist like “a contaminated thing.”
“For me, that is a declaration of bankruptcy of faith,” Bishop Eleganti charged.
“As it is written in Psalm 90, ‘Even though a thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, such evils will not afflict you,’” he stated.
“And so also when the plague rages by day and by night,” he continued.
“It is also quite clear, a sacramental [holy water] that I use to place myself under the protection of God… I can’t maintain an attitude of total unbelief at the same time… [to believe] that it does not help me at all, but on the contrary could even harm me.”
Bishop Eleganti stressed that Catholics “cannot rely on secular strategies” that were often nonsensical but must resort to prayer.
He said that even people outside the Catholic Church “somehow felt” that the Church hierarchy’s response to COVID “was a surrender of faith, as if God did not exist.”