Pope Francis has accused some European leaders of embracing Hitler-style populism as the world tackles the Covid-19 pandemic. The 83-year-old bishop of Rome made the controversial comments in an interview with UK-based Catholic weekly The Tablet.

Speaking as Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter, the pope said: “At this time in Europe when we are beginning to hear populist speeches and witness political decisions of this selective kind, it’s all too easy to remember Hitler’s speeches in 1933, which were not so different from some of the speeches of a few European politicians now.”

He added: “This crisis is affecting us all, rich and poor alike, and putting a spotlight on hypocrisy. I am worried by the hypocrisy of certain political personalities who speak of facing up to the crisis, of the problem of hunger in the world, but who in the meantime manufacture weapons. This is a time to be converted from this kind of functional hypocrisy. It’s a time for integrity. Either we are coherent with our beliefs or we lose everything.”

We face a fundamental choice as we seek to resolve the coronavirus crisis, Pope Francis said during his morning Mass Monday.

Commenting on the day’s Gospel reading (Mt 28:8-15), which describes the risen Christ’s appearance to Mary Magdalene and Mary of Clopas, the pope said April 13: “The Gospel proposes a choice that also applies today: the hope of Jesus’ resurrection and nostalgia for the tomb.”

“Thus, in finding solutions to this pandemic, the choice will be between life, the resurrection of the people, and the god of money.”

“If you choose money, you choose the way of hunger, slavery, wars, arms factories, uneducated children… there is the tomb. Lord — it is the prayer of the pope — help us to choose the good of the people, without ever falling into the tomb of mammon,” he said, according to a transcription of his homily by Vatican News.

He began the Mass by praying that researchers and political leaders would make the correct choices for those they serve.

He said: “Let us pray today for the rulers, the scientists, the politicians, who have begun to study the way out, the post-pandemic, this ‘after’ that has already begun: that they find the right way, always in favour of the people.”

With the elderly representing the largest demographic cohort of lives claimed by the coronavirus, the Vatican’s top official on life issues has warned against selective care practices that prioritize young patients.

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, in an interview with Crux noted that with many hospitals facing shortages of essential equipment such as ventilators at times give preference to patients with better perceived odds of survival, which generally disadvantages the elderly.

“This is the ‘throwaway culture’ in action, forcefully condemned by Pope Francis. [It’s] ‘justified’ by the lack of medical instruments, in turn due to healthcare policy choices that cut costs,” Paglia said, calling the decision to base healthcare and educational funding on cost-saving measures “wrong and misleading.”

He also noted this is happening at the same time courts in Italy, which still leads the world in deaths due to the virus, are debating a possible liberalization of the country’s euthanasia law.

Euthanasia itself is not permitted in Italian law, but in 2017 lawmakers passed a bill allowing adults, together with their doctors, to determine their own end-of-life care, including the terms under which they are able to refuse treatment. The law also allows citizens to write living wills and to refuse medical treatment, artificial nutrition and hydration.

In September 2019, courts ruled it is not always a crime to assist someone in “intolerable pain” to kill themselves. The case involved music producer FabianoAntoniani, who became tetraplegic and blind after a 2014 car accident and three years later was driven by a member of Italy’s Radical Party to Switzerland, where he underwent assisted suicide.

“It is delusional to place age as the only and decisive criterion for care, for salvation or condemnation, which, obviously, relegates the elderly to being too many. Can the weak and elderly be ‘discarded?’

The lack of medical instruments forces choices and do younger people and those with greater hope of recovery receive assistance first? This is the “throwaway culture” in action, forcefully condemned by Pope Francis. It’s “justified” by the lack of medical instruments, in turn due to healthcare policy choices that cut costs.

Holy Week and Easter events broadcast and shared by Vatican media reached millions of people around the world, attracting new viewers, followers and fans inspired by Pope Francis’ words and gestures.

“We have been struck by the many emails we have received, comments and posts on our social media from people, even agnostics and nonbelievers, who say they have been moved by the words and gestures of the Holy Father during this very difficult period,” Alessandro Gisotti, vice-editorial director of Vatican media, told Catholic News Service by email April 14.

Huge spikes in online visitors, views, follows and comments on their numerous platforms showed that “many people, not just the Catholic faithful, were able to follow and ‘encounter’ the Holy Father and, through him, the Word of God thanks to this technology and especially to streaming services and social media,” he said in a response to a request for information about online engagement during Holy Week and Easter.

Gisotti told CNS that Vatican media outlets tried to put into practice that “creativity of love that the pope asks of us in order to overcome the isolation caused by the pandemic.”

Their Vatican News site, which offers video, radio, podcasts, images, news and audio services in more than 30 languages, saw its number of visitors and page views quadruple from the same liturgical period last year.

Nearly 5.5 million users registered more than 14.5 million views on the vaticannews.va website between April 5 and April 13 versus Holy Week last year, which saw 1.5 million users and some 3.5 million page views.

Vatican News livestreamed all the major events on its YouTube channels with live commentary in six languages, plus, for the first time, a channel featuring a sign-language interpreter.

Easter events broadcast on YouTube, Gisotti said, had more than 2.1 million views.

The social media accounts for Vatican News and Pope Francis also saw huge growth, he said.

Over Holy Week the @Pontifex Twitter accounts surpassed 50 million followers, while the @FranciscusInstagram accounts exceeded 7 million followers.

The Vatican News Instagram account gained 27,000 new followers over Holy Week, bringing them to more than 436,000 followers. Vatican News tweets, over its different Twitter accounts in six languages, had 61 million views and received 31,000 mentions.

Addressing the world two weeks ago at the height of the global pandemic, Pope Francis paid tribute to the “forgotten people” – the grocery clerks, service industry workers, cleaners, and caregivers that are frequently overlooked yet are now keeping the world functioning.

Earlier this week, a virtual Georgetown University discussion examined how those individuals – and the tens of millions of people experiencing economic devastation from the pandemic – might best be supported by both the Church and the country in the pandemic’s aftermath.

The panel, “Life and Dignity, Justice and Solidarity: Moral Principles for Responding to the COVID-19 Economic Crisis,” was convened on Monday by the university’s Initiative for Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and brought together a mix of policy experts, academics, and a community activist, with the aim of charting a path forward.

E.J. Dionne, who teaches at Georgetown and is a columnist for the Washington Post, kicked off the discussion by noting that while the government is rightfully calling for physical social distancing, he said that now, more than ever, is the time for social connection in order to ensure strong societal bonds to both get through the pandemic and to be united in the eventual rebuilding that will need to occur.

Similarly, New York Times columnist David Brooks high-lighted the Catholic principle of solidarity as “an active virtue” that demands the participation of every single individual member of society. While Brooks is not a Catholic, he said that Catholic social teaching is the “most coherent philosophy that opposes a philosophy of rampant individualism” and should be relied on especially now.