Pope Francis Appoints mRNA Technology Developer Katalin Karikó to Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life

A biochemist who received a Nobel Prize in 2023 for her work in helping to create the mRNA technology that enabled the development of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines is now a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life.

Pope Francis announced the appointment of Katalin Karikó on February 10.

“The Holy Father has appointed the Distinguished Professor Katalin Karikó, Nobel Prize for Medicine 2023, professor at University of Pennsylvania, as ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy for Life,” the announcement read.

The Academy was founded by Pope St. John Paul II through a motu proprio in February 1994, in which he wrote he would “represent the various branches of the biomedical sciences and those that are most closely related to problems concerning the promotion and protection of life.”

Catholic News Agency (CNA) noted the Academy is now headed by Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, an appointee of Pope Francis. Recent statutes, approved by Francis, say its members may be of any faith, but should “promote and defend the principles regarding the value of life and dignity of the human person, interpreted in a way that conforms to the Magisterium of the Church.”

“I am deeply honored that Pope Frances [sic] appointed me to be Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life,” Karikó responded on X. “Last year, I gave a lecture in the Vatican on emerging biotechnologies. It was exciting to meet Pope Frances [sic] on a private audience with my family, he blessed my grandchildren.”

In a video response to her appointment, the Hungarian-born Karikó said she was speaking on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. In keeping with that theme, she described herself as a curious young girl who got “swept up” in biochemistry “and the fascinating possibility of mRNA”:

Together with my colleagues we built upon discoveries of scientists who came before us and we created the optimal RNA suitable for therapy. Never in a million years I would have imagined that it would have been used to create a vaccine to combat a global pandemic and eventually save millions of lives.

“So, I also think about all the young girls who may become inspired and want to be a scientist,” she added. “I would like to encourage them to both question and make better the world around us.”

Karikó’s appointment comes, nevertheless, as the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments, on March 18, in the case of Murthy v. Missouri, in which the state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, and other private parties, assert the Biden administration colluded with social media platform giants to censor posts that contained views opposed to that of the government regarding COVID-19 public health policy and the related vaccines.

On February 5, cardiologist and pioneer of early treatment for COVID-19 Dr. Peter McCullough observed at America Out Loud News that, despite the establishment medical community’s support for the COVID vaccine campaign:

There is a plethora of papers in the scientific literature that disclose horrific, serious adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination, including hospitalization and death, or failure of the products to stop infection, transmission, or serious outcomes like hospitalization or death. 

Yet, McCullough noted, “somewhere in the paper, the authors insert a gratuitous promotion such as ‘vaccination has saved millions of lives’ or ‘the benefits of vaccination still outweigh the risks.’”

“These phrases come without evidence or support, seem out of place, and I wonder if they are inserted to gain institutional approval for submission or by design are used to get past biased editorial boards and reviewers who want to keep the false ‘safe and effective’ narrative flowing in the medical literature,” he asserted.

McCullough also told the European Union Parliament in September  that a complex “biopharmaceutical syndicate,” formed in January 2020, conspired to cover up that the COVID-19 virus “was engineered in a joint U.S.-Chinese collaboration in the lab in Wuhan, China.”

The “syndicate,” he said, also created global fear through several false narratives, including one that maintained the COVID-19 virus could only be contained with lockdowns, masking and never-ending mRNA vaccines – which were declared “safe and effective.”

Despite the claims of the effectiveness of the COVID vaccines, in October 2022, Pfizer international executive Janine Small admitted to a European Parliament committee that her company did not even test its COVID mRNA vaccine for its ability to prevent transmission of the virus before it was placed on the market.

Responding to that specific question from Rob Roos, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, Small, president of international developed markets at Pfizer, said, “Regarding the question around did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market – no (she laughed) –  these, em, you know, we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market.”

Karikó, who has served as senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement therapies at BioNTech – which co-developed a COVID vaccine with Pfizer – expressed gratitude in her video response to her appointment to the Pontifical Academy, as she praised the mRNA technology:

And at the same time, I also think about all those hardworking scientists who are just like me – passionate about their work and immensely contributing to the development of mRNA medicine. The possibilities for messenger RNA are endless. It could give the body the message to create antibodies to defend against viruses, send a message to corrective mutation in a cancerous tumor, or deliver a message for the heart to create more healthy cells after a heart attack.

The biochemist also used the opportunity of her prestigious appointment to point out that she had previously been “demoted” at the University of Pennsylvania for her work.

“I was not popular with those who followed conventional science,” she said.

In much of the media, however, Karikó and her colleague Drew Weissman, a professor of vaccine research and director of the Institute for RNA Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, were celebrated after they were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Writing at the Wall Street Journal in October, Gregory Zuckerman announced “the University of Pennsylvania is basking in the glow of two researchers who this week were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for their pioneering work on messenger RNA.”

“Until recently, the school and its faculty largely disdained one of those scientists,” Zuckerman wrote, adding:

Karikó hasn’t only proven her detractors wrong but also reached the pinnacle of science. Her research with Weissman helped lead to the mRNA vaccines that protected people worldwide during the Covid-19 pandemic and now shows promise for flu, cancer and other diseases.

Scientific American applauded the researchers for their “work on mRNA, which led to COVID vaccines that have protected billions of people,” noting the two researchers “were awarded a $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for their work on modifying the genetic molecule RNA to avoid triggering a harmful immune response.”

The Breakthrough Prize was founded in 2013 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, as a means to honor “transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life.”

But John Leake, co-author with McCullough of The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex, saw it differently.

Writing in December at Courageous Discourse, Leake noted that, in an interview with Karikó and Weissman at the Boston Globe, the two colleagues “reaffirm their faith in the COVID-19 vaccines.”

In reply to the question of whether it is “urgent that we all get the new COVID vaccine,” the researchers said that while a 75-year-old would “definitely need the vaccine,” still, “even for young people, the importance there is that they may not get really sick, but what about their parents? What about their grandparents?”

“[T]aking the vaccine is less to protect themselves and more to protect society,” Karikó and Weissman said.

“This is a stunning assertion, given that even the CDC has acknowledged (almost two years ago) that the COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission,” Leake observed, pointing to the two Nobel laureates’ “patently false assertion in a newspaper published in one of the world’s most highly educated cities.”

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This content is solely for educational and discussion purposes. Any treatment undertaken in terms of COVID (or any illness) should be discussed with a licensed medical professional.