via Times of San Diego:

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy said Thursday the Catholic church supports COVID-19 vaccinations and priests must “caringly decline” any requests from parishioners seeking a religious exemption.

“Such a declaration is particularly problematic because the Holy See has made it clear that receiving the COVID vaccine is perfectly consistent with Catholic faith, and indeed laudatory in light of the common good in this time of pandemic,” wrote McElroy in a letter on Wednesday to priests….

“My greatest worry is that signing this declaration [from the Colorado Catholic Conference] thrusts our priests into the impossible position of asserting that ‘the Catholic Church’s teachings may lead individual Catholics…to decline certain vaccines’ when those priests recognize that Catholic teaching proclaims just the opposite,” said McElroy.