The bishop of Arecibo had also supported conscientious objection to compulsory vaccination against COVID-19 in a statement published on Aug. 17, 2021.
He made the intervention after Pedro Pierluisi, the governor of Puerto Rico, issued an executive order that all government and healthcare workers, both in public and private institutions, must be vaccinated, as well as workers in the hotel industry.
In his letter, the bishop said that “it is legitimate for a faithful Catholic to have doubts about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine given that what the pharmaceutical companies or drug regulatory agencies say is in no way a dogma of faith.”
“And that safety and efficacy are relevant and necessary data for moral judgment,” he explained.
ACI Prensa reported that Fernández Torres refused to sign a joint statement issued on Aug. 24 by the Puerto Rican bishops which said that “there is a duty to be vaccinated and that we do not see how a conscientious objection can be invoked from Catholic morality.”

In a March 9 declaration, published on the diocesan website, Fernández Torres strongly objected to his removal.

He said: “I deeply regret that in the Church where mercy is so much preached, in practice some lack a minimum sense of justice.”

“No process has been made against me, nor have I been formally accused of anything and simply one day the apostolic delegate [the pope’s representative in Puerto Rico] verbally communicated to me that Rome was asking me to resign.”

“A successor of the apostles is now being replaced without even undertaking what would be a due canonical process to remove a parish priest.”

He went on: “I was informed that I had committed no crime but that I supposedly ‘had not been obedient to the pope nor had I been in sufficient communion with my brother bishops of Puerto Rico.’”

“It was suggested to me that if I resigned from the diocese I would remain at the service of the Church in case at some time I was needed in some other position; an offer that in fact proves my innocence.”