Official figures in Russia speak of 438 infections and one victim. The economic consequences of the pandemic are worrying. The Orthodox Church steps up hygiene measures, but continues to hold Eucharistic celebrations, processions, veneration of icons. Russian Muslims have begun continuous reading of the Koran. Ekaterinburg nuns burn incense made from "lavender, geranium, basil and lemon, with great antiviral effect". Syrian rue is smoked in Turkmenistan; in Belarus, Lukashenko recommends "drinking more vodka". The sound of bells drives out viruses.
"We pray for families who are beginning to feel the need because of the pandemic." “I often think: they are good people - priests, nuns - who lack the courage to go and serve the poor. Something is missing. What these people were missing, the doctors of the Law. They lost their memory, they lost what Jesus felt in his heart: that he was part of his own people ".
The pontiff holds an "extraordinary moment of prayer" for the end of the coronavirus epidemic. "The Lord asks us and, in the midst of our tempest,” urges to show solidarity and have hope, above all to be converted. “It is a time to get our lives back on track with regard to” the Lord and others.
The devil is responsible for the cruelty against the righteous and for anti-Christian persecution. “Let us think of how the devil treated Jesus with cruelty, but also persecuted Christians; how he tried the most sophisticated means to lead them to apostasy, to move away from God. This is, as we say in everyday language, diabolical; indeed, [it is a] diabolical mind.”
During the epidemic, the dead were cremated immediately, without ceremonies and without specifying the cause of death. Now family members are waiting to bury the urns containing the ashes of their loved ones. About 45,000 urnes will be distributed in Wuhan alone. The number of coronavirus deaths in China is deliberately underestimated. In the days of the peak of the epidemic, the crematory ovens worked for 19 hours a day. Journalists Li Zehua, Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi have disappeared. Photos and videos of queues at Funeral Parlors and cemeteries are blocked on social media.
“Idolatry leads people towards the wrong religiosity; indeed, many times worldliness, which is a [form of] idolatry, makes people turn the celebration of a sacrament into a worldly feast.” Like a wedding. “People don’t know if it is a sacrament – where newlyweds really give their all, love each other before God, promise to be faithful before God, and receive the grace of God – or a catwalk of models” centred on “how they are dressed, one and the other”.
The Congregation for Divine Worship issued a decree with "general indications" for Holy Week celebrations. Services will be held without people. “Means of live (not recorded) telematic broadcasts can be of help.”
According to data from the 2018 Statistical Yearbook, the number of permanent bishops and deacons is growing, but priests, seminarians and religious are decreasing. In Asia, Catholics go from 10.9 to 11.1 percent.
At first radical Muslims claimed that the epidemic was a sign of Allah's anger and punishment. Now they claim the virus is a test of faith. If “such characters, such obscurantists with dark ideas, intervene and interfere in such sensitive issues with impunity it is because the state does not do its duty, that of protecting people.”
The 25th anniversary of John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium vitae was at the center of Francis' catechesis for the general audience. "he life that we are called to promote and defend is not an abstract concept, but always manifests itself in a person in the flesh: a newly conceived child, a poor outcast, a sick person who is alone and discouraged or in a terminal state, one who has lost his job or cannot find one, a rejected or ghettoized migrant...".
The Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Conference of European Churches (KEK), the ecumenical association of Christian Churches of Europe participated in the initiative, proposed by Francis.
Francis mentions the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul who have been running a dispensary for needy families in the Vatican for 98 years.
The National Council of Churches in India and the Indian Evangelical Alliance have taken up the pontiff's invitation. Felix Machado: "People are terrified and anxious; the situation asks us to witness a profound faith". Rev. Vijayesh Lal, EFI secretary general: “We ask all communities to pray and take care of the elderly and unemployed people”.
Francis chooses theme "The Words of Vocation" for the Day of Prayer for Vocations. "On this day in particular, but also in the ordinary pastoral life of our communities, I ask the Church to continue to promote vocations. May she touch the hearts of the faithful and enable each of them to discover with gratitude God’s call in their lives".
24 doctors and about 50 priests have died in Italy serving the sick. Almost five thousand health workers infected. In his homily, Francis speaks of sloth, "the sin of the neutral, neither white nor black". "The sin of sadness that is the seed of the devil, of that inability to make a decision about one's life, but yes, to look at the life of others to complain".
