A court has ruled that a care worker who was terminated for refusing to receive a coronavirus vaccine can claim in an upcoming tribunal that her motives were religious.
Patrycja Wierowska worked as a caregiver at HC-One care homes until April 28, 2021, when she was sacked.
Ms. Wierowska, a longtime Roman Catholic, said that one of the reasons for her termination was her refusal to get the Covid vaccination on religious grounds.
In a preliminary decision released on Friday, employment judge Eoin Fowell concluded that Ms. Wierowska may use her faith as a protected feature before an employment tribunal.
He added, “I am certain that her views on the vaccination are closely tied to her religious convictions, and that there is a sufficiently close and clear connection between her reluctance to take the Covid vaccine and her underlying beliefs.”
A preliminary hearing on the subject was held remotely in July at the Exeter Employment Tribunal.
Ms. Wierowska feels receiving the vaccination would violate her religious beliefs since it entails the use of “fetal blood.”
The claimant asserted that altering the blood with a manufactured vaccine or using aborted fetuses in the development of a Covid vaccine violates the precepts of her Roman Catholic religion, which holds that blood and life are both divinely bestowed and sacred.
It comes as a dispute developed in the global Catholic community regarding vaccinations that employed cell lines derived from abortion-related tissues performed decades ago.
In December 2020, the Vatican informed Roman Catholics that it was morally permissible to utilize Covid-19 vaccinations even if their manufacturing relied on cell lines derived from the tissues of killed fetuses.
Ms. Wierowska testified in July that she accepted the Vatican’s viewpoint, but that she also had “free choice.”
She acknowledged the moral justification for limiting the spread of illnesses in order to safeguard nursing home patients, but stated that she was taking every other precaution to prevent transmission.
Ms. Wierowska expressed skepticism over the utility of facemasks ‘given the quantity of airborne particles’ and revealed she did not wear one to the Freedom March.
Ms. Wierowska reportedly believed that Covid vaccinations might interfere with DNA in the nucleus of cells and that they are experimental with unknown long-term effects.
Stuart Irving, representing HC-One Oval Limited, contended that the claimant’s stance on vaccinations was more philosophical than religious, and that she was simply unimpressed by the existing scientific data.
Dr. Anna Loutfi, counsel for Ms. Wierowska, claimed, however, that her beliefs were profoundly rooted in her religious perspective and worldview.
She noted that her opinions need not be the conventional or orthodox perspective of the Catholic Church, and that a religious belief can be protected even if it is not dictated by the faith.
In his decision, Mr. Fowell dismissed claims that the claimant’s primary concerns were health-related.
He wrote: ‘This is an issue that has concerned the whole Catholic community to such an extent that the Vatican had to give a clear declaration on behalf of the Pope in an attempt to address the situation.
Even that statement did not criticize any Catholic for refusing the vaccination on moral grounds, and it was implicit in the statement that this remained a matter of personal conscience.
These moral considerations are inextricably tied to the traditional Catholic stance on abortion and the resultant aversion to the use of stem cells or foetal material in any medical endeavour.