The coronavirus has taken a heavy toll on Catholic Church priests and nuns around the world, killing hundreds of them in a handful of heavily affected countries.
Among the deceased is an Italian priest who brought cinema to his small community in the 1950s; an endearing New York priest who cared for teenagers and the homeless; and a nun from India who traveled to her country to bury her father after he died of COVID-19, but who contracted the virus herself.
In some countries, the majority of clergy who lost their lives were elderly and lived in nursing homes, where they did not carry out person-to-person pastoral work. Elsewhere, however, a further blow to active clergy was seen, accelerating a decades-long decline among their ranks that Pope Francis called a “hemorrhage” in 2017.
Coronavirus deaths among clergy are not unique to Catholicism, said Andrew Chesnut, president of Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, as religious leaders of various faiths have high rates of exposure as “spiritual workers of first line ”when caring for the sick and dying in hospitals and nursing homes. But the impact is more serious for a Church that experiences a “constant shortage of priests” in most countries, due to difficulties in recruiting seminarians, he added. And because Catholicism places greater emphasis on the role of the priest compared to other religions, the losses are felt more strongly.
“If you already have few priests and they are being decimated by COVID-19,” said Chesnut, “of course that affects the ability of the Church to serve its parishioners.”
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INDIA
Catholics are a small minority in India – some 20 million of the 1.38 billion people in this Hindu-majority nation, according to the Indian Bishops’ Conference.
Yet the surge in clergy deaths so alarmed the Rev. Suresh Mathew during the devastating second wave of the coronavirus earlier this year that he began emailing bishops across the country for daily updates. Many mornings he would wake up with multiple alerts.
“It was a shock,” said Mathew, a priest at the Church of the Holy Redeemer in New Delhi.
In April about two priests and nuns died a day. The rate doubled in May, when Mathew recorded the deaths of 129 nuns and 116 priests.
The worst of the pandemic has happened in India, but not before he compiled a list of more than 500 priests and nuns who died since mid-April.
One of those losses touched him closely: Sister Josephine Ekka, from the Surya Nagar convent, in his same community. She had traveled to bury her father in the town of Jharsuguda, in eastern India, and later fell ill.
Ekka joined the community in September 2020, amid the pandemic, and became responsible for the liturgy and organization of the choir at a time when church attendance was limited. He is remembered for his kindness and devotion to the poor.
In the western state of Gujarat, where vaccination efforts were halted by a powerful cyclone that struck at the same time as the pandemic spread, priest Cedric Prakash of the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola has mourned five priests .
Among them is the Rev. Jerry Sequeira, a close friend who on Easter Sunday baptized a newborn whose father died of COVID-19. A day later, Sequeira discovered that he too had contracted the virus.
“His attitude was ‘nothing is going to happen to me, God is good,’” Prakash said. “He was always available to people.”
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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states that there is no comprehensive count of the number of priests and nuns who are among the more than 600,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in the United States.
However, it is well established that the death toll includes dozens and dozens of nuns who lived in congregations across the country, from upstate New York to the suburbs of Milwaukee and Detroit and beyond. Many were elderly retirees who dedicated their lives to education or nursing.
A single order, the Feliciana Sisters, lost 21 nuns in four convents.
“Faith and hope have played a role in my life as I watch the devastating news of the loss,” said Sister Mary Jeanine Morozowich of Greensburg, Pennsylvania. “I couldn’t go on without believing that there is some purpose, some reason for all this.”
The priest Jorge Ortiz-Garay, of Santa Brígida Parish in Brooklyn, New York, passed away on March 27, 2020, and is believed to be the first priest in the United States to be victim of COVID-19. The 49-year-old religious, who oversaw the annual feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the pilgrimage of thousands of attendees, is remembered by parishioners for his devotion to the community and for leading youth groups.
Also among the lives lost is Reginald Foster, 81, a Wisconsin-born priest who served for four decades as one of the Vatican’s leading Latin experts. He died in a Milwaukee nursing home on Christmas Day.
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ITALY
Italy was one of the most affected countries at the beginning of the pandemic.
As of March this year, 292 diocesan priests, mostly elderly, died from the virus, according to statements from the Italian Episcopal Conference.
The episcopate’s news agency, Religious Information Services, noted that the death toll almost equaled the 299 new ordinations in Italy for the entire year 2021.
Among the deceased is Raffaele Falco, a priest from Ercolano, near Naples. The 77-year-old parish priest was known for his work in the fight against the Camorra, the region’s mafia group.
The 94-year-old Reverend Franco Minardi, who arrived in Ozzano Taro in 1950 and served as its priest for 70 years, also died. His commitment to faith in young people was such that he organized the construction of a movie theater in which he screened the first films in that agricultural community. His legacy also includes a tennis court and a game room.
Sister Maria Ortensia Turati, 88, was one of the nuns who died in a convent in the northern city of Tortona. A social worker by training, she was the general mother of the Little Missionary Sisters of Charity from 1993 to 2005 and founded missions in the Philippines and Ivory Coast.
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BRAZIL
As of March this year, at least 1,400 priests contracted the coronavirus in Brazil, and at least 65 of them, in addition to three bishops, died, according to a commission linked to the National Conference of Bishops.
Among them was Cardinal Eusebio Scheid, 88. He became archbishop of Rio de Janeiro in 2001 and was named a cardinal two years later by then-Pope John Paul II. In his 60 years at the head of the Church, he was known for his deep interest in the quality of the education of priests.
Scheid was also known for a comment that some interpreted as political, others as an awkwardness; he referred to then-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as “chaotic” rather than Catholic. After a little stir, Scheid softened his tone, saying that Lula sounded “confused” on matters of faith.
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Associated Press journalists Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Peter Orsi in Truckee, California, Mauricio Savarese in Rio de Janeiro and Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
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