Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes for Health, has praised Pope Francis for promoting the Covid vaccine. “Having a leader in the Catholic Church who has been so outspoken and so willing to lay out the facts and not be dissuaded by a lot of the myths and even conspiracies has been really helpful,” Collins told the National Catholic Reporter. The Reporter article quoting Collins suggested that Bishop Joseph Strickland “openly defied the Vatican” by opposing the vaccine, and that the US bishops’ conference “fostered confusion” by (accurately) pointing out the use of fetal tissues in the development of vaccines.