The message of Easter is not a mirage or a magic formula, Pope Francis said. But it does offer hope to a world suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic and many sources of conflict.
Coronavirus
Posted inFaith, Short Take
God does not take Mass attendance during a pandemic
Vaccines are promising an end to the Covid-19 pandemic, but weekly Mass attendance may not yet be possible. And for centuries, many Catholics have maintained faith without it.
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Delays, corruption and misinformation thwart Covid-19 vaccination efforts across Amazon region
Covid-19 immunization campaigns must overcome enormous difficulties in reaching remote indigenous groups, isolated riverside communities and the villages of quilombola people, the descendants of African slaves.
Posted inFaith, Short Take
The Covid-19 vaccines are a miracle. Yes, an honest-to-God miracle.
A miracle is not something that bends nature but something that, like Christ’s works, manifests God’s power to restore life. The Covid-19 vaccines fit that definition.
Posted inFaith, Vatican Dispatch
Pope Francis on Palm Sunday: ‘In drawing close to those ill-treated by life, we are loving Jesus.’
In Palm Sunday services at the Vatican, Pope Francis said that to admire Jesus “is not enough. We have to follow in his footsteps.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Rewatching ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is the perfect journey for the end of Lent (and quarantine)
Revisiting this classic story in this time of isolation offers a new perspective on quarantine, and indeed a new perspective on journeys themselves.
Posted inFaith, News
New York Catholic Church in Covid-19 epicenter leads congregants out of sorrow
More than 100 congregants of the parish in the mostly Latino Corona neighborhood of Queens died of COVID-19, many of them in the early days of the pandemic.
Posted inExplainer, Faith
What Pope Francis has said about Covid-19 since his iconic Urbi et Orbi blessing one year ago
Pope Francis: “We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other.”
Posted inFaith, Vatican Dispatch
Pope Francis instructs Vatican to provide vaccines for 1,200 of Rome’s poorest people during Holy Week
At the pope’s instruction, the Office of Papal Charities has purchased doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to give to over 1,200 of Rome’s “poorest and most marginalized people” during Holy Week.
Posted inDispatches, Politics & Society
Brazil plunges into Covid chaos while church fights the ‘hunger pandemic’
In Brazil under its Covid-19 lockdown: “At first, only the most vulnerable were starving, but the hunger queue is growing each day. It’s a hunger pandemic.”