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All was well at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Parish in the Diocese of Manzini in the Southern Africa nation of Eswatini, popularly known as Swaziland, until Fr. Francis Onyango announced that Public Mass had been suspended. Fr. Onyango made the announcement that pierced the heart of an elderly woman who was attending Mass that morning on Wednesday, March 18.
Priests and nuns ministering among those considered vulnerable to COVID-19 in various parts of the world including Africa stand to benefit from a €5M (US$5.43 million) grant that Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International has set aside, the Germany-based Catholic organization has announced.
As governments struggle to contain the spread of COVID-19, reinforcing preventive measures, a South Sudanese Catholic Bishop has encouraged Christians to recognize the fact that as people of God, they are the church that “must remain open” amid directives to close church buildings.
In a move to boost Nigeria government’s efforts to contain COVID-19 in the country, Catholic Bishops in Africa’s most populous nation have granted their country’s task force overseeing the pandemic “full access to” all health facilities, which the Catholic Church owns, a Church official has reported.
The Catholic Church in Ghana has been applauded for responding promptly to a special appeal from the Administration of the Ghana Prisons Service to donate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to help avert the spread of COVID-19 in the 44 Prisons in the West African country that has a total of 15,000 inmates.
The Archbishop of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, Phillip Cardinal Ouédraogo who was hospitalized at the end of last month for COVID-19 has, in his message on the occasion of Palm Sunday celebrated April 5, called for solidarity in the care for patients diagnosed with the virus that has claimed at least 82,000 lives globally.
The Order of Malta, a Rome-based Catholic lay Religious Order that is active in some 120 countries, is supporting efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19 in Africa where the centuries old institution is present in over 30 nations.
As countries put in place measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, a Cardinal in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has cautioned that the spread of the pandemic in the Central African nation would be disastrous, as the country does not have the capability of handling another outbreak, soon after struggling over the years to fight Ebola epidemic.
The call for divine intervention to heal the world including the people of God affected by COVID-19, a pandemic that has occasioned unprecedented restrictions, is a key highlight of Bishop Emmanuel Badejo’s Chrism Mass message for the Priests in his diocese of Oyo, Nigeria.
About 100 mourners who wore white and blue face masks as a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19 gathered at Holy Family Basilica in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, to bid farewell to a distinguished Catholic Archbishop who died on March 30 after nearly 60 years of shepherding the people of God the East African country.
Catholic journalists in Africa are being encouraged to take up the responsibility of identifying and exposing fake news about COVID-19 in the face of increasing misinformation on the pandemic that has claimed over 74,000 lives globally, with at least 1.33 million confirmed cases.
A Catholic Archbishop in Nigeria, while addressing the adverse effects of COVID-19, has said that the disease has reduced humanity to the same level even as governments across the world battle the pandemic that has indiscriminately caused thousands of deaths, social disorder and a plunge in economic systems.
The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and its toll on Ghana where 214 reported cases of the disease have been confirmed has brought the country together in ways never witnessed before, according to former Ghanaian President, John Dramani Mahama.
Following the demise of Bishop Angelo Moreschi of Ethiopia’s Gambella Vicariate, the first Catholic Prelate known to have died of COVID-19, an Apostolic Administrator has been appointed for the missionary ecclesiastical territory in the Western part of the country that is dependent upon the Vatican-based Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis offered Mass in a nearly empty St. Peter’s Basilica and urged Catholics quarantined at home to remember "what really matters" in life: loving God and serving others.
The government directive on social distancing aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 has had an influence on Holy Week celebrations in many nations of the world, including the West African country of Liberia where Catholic Bishops have issued guidelines that conform to the social distance restriction.
In a country where the faithful go for months without celebrating Holy Mass due to a shortage of Priests, the Church in Algeria is experiencing very little disruption owing to the spread of COVID-19 that has forced worshippers in many parts of the world to miss Mass.
As South Africans continue to observe the 21-day nation-wide lockdown declared to control the spread of COVID-19, the Bishop of Mthatha diocese has called on the clergy and religious in his diocese to consider making sacrifices that would include giving from their own food reserves to help those adversely affected by the stay-at-home directive.
As governments across the globe battle to contain the spread of COVID-19 with medical researchers working around the clock to find a cure, a Cameroonian Catholic Archbishop who has practiced herbalism over the years has said that medicinal plants can be tried as a possible cure of the coronavirus.
There is a necessity for governments around the world to join hands in the fight against COVID-19 if the disease that has infected at least one million people across the globe and claimed tens of thousands of lives is to be managed in good time, an Ivorian Bishop has said.