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Pope Francis on Saturday came out in favor of a waiver on intellectual property rights for coronavirus vaccines, echoing comments made by the US administration earlier this week.

World Trade Organization leaders have recently urged member nations to come to an agreement on the potential vaccine patent waivers, hoping to remove obstacles to the ramping up of vaccine production in developing countries.

President Joe Biden’s team endorsed the idea on Wednesday with Trade Representative Katherine Tai saying in a statement that it “supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.”

Speaking at a global fundraising event on Saturday, Pope Francis said the world was infected with the “virus of individualism.”

“A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines,” he said in comments translated by Reuters.

“Another variant is when we put the laws of the market or of intellectual market or intellectual property over the laws of love and the health of humanity,” the pope added.