Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You know, Angela Merkel has always been very, very strong on need to help developing countries. You know, the U.S. has already started mass purchasing for itself. Rich countries, like the U.S., like Britain has already started making big orders. What do you think of what Merkel said? And have you heard, maybe from your church community around the world in some of the most deprived areas, how it is — how it’s going for them in this moment?

JUSTIN WELBY, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: Well, we have heard very, very recently. A couple weeks back, we had a meeting with the — almost all of the major leaders of our provinces around the world, obviously remotely. And the most distinctive thing was the economic hardship in so many places. Even those that don’t have COVID rampant in their countries are suffering the knock-on economic effects. And it is leading to starvation. It means the child soldier can’t be rescued. It means the things I have seen being done in refugee camps in Northern Uganda, in schools in South Sudan, in the protection of women from sexual violence and conflict, all these things are being impacted by the collapse of the global economy. And Angela Merkel is absolutely right. We need both the money and the delivery systems. As the Anglican Communion, we have in other areas, for instance, working with the Gates Foundation, been involved in the distribution of vaccines. The Roman Catholic Church, much bigger than us, much better spread than us, has been doing the same. The networks exist. The money exists. The expertise exists. They just need to be put in the same pot, and we will see a really rapid improvement. And, as I said earlier, and I was quoting the World Health Organization there, and they dialogued with us with all the heads of our provinces a couple of weeks back. And we had a really good partnership dialogue. They were the ones who said, if we don’t solve this virus everywhere, we won’t solve it anywhere. So, the interest is there to serve of and love the poorest. Archbishop Tutu in South Africa, who I’m sure you interviewed, said, a promise to the poor is especially sacred. We have made those promises.