Mexican church and civic officials have canceled public feast celebrations for Mexico’s patroness at her shrine in Mexico City due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The celebration normally attracts 10 million pilgrims to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the world’s most-visited Marian shrine.
The Msgr. McClancy girls’ soccer team won the city championship.
Pope Francis’ decision to move the local celebrations of World Youth Day from Palm Sunday to the feast of Christ the King addresses the pastoral needs of local churches, said Father Joao Chagas, head of the youth section of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life.
As the number of COVID-19 cases rises dramatically in the U.S., Canada and around the world, government officials almost universally have returned to stricter lockdowns, with U.S. officials even urging families to reconsider how many people to host on Thanksgiving dinner or perhaps cancel the holiday meal altogether.
In that brief intermezzo over the summer between what turned out to be the first and second great surges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pope Francis held a series of appropriately socially distanced, “virtual” conversations with his premier English-language explicator about what he believes needs to be done for the world to be better than it was before the crisis.
An annual survey on public attitudes toward religious faith by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty indicates, not surprisingly, a considerable amount of objection to government-imposed limits on the size of congregations in houses of worship amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pope Francis believes that the COVID-19 pandemic revealed “the best and worst” of each person, and that now more than ever, it’s important to recognize that the crisis can only be overcome by searching for the common good.
For many U.S. bishops, the virtual nature of this year’s annual fall meeting actually made it more efficient and productive than a typical year.
For many Catholics, making the transition from in-person to livestreamed Mass during the pandemic has been a sobering experience. It has meant not being able to receive the Eucharist and participate in Mass with the rest of the faithful. That’s not Debbie Starkman-Zdyrko’s experience. She feels closer to her community and the Catholic faith now than she did before quarantine began.
Several unplanned protests have broken out in Rome in recent days over coronavirus restrictions, and among the demonstrators have been some high-profile traditionalist Catholics.
