News Briefs

Denver Newsroom, Apr 26, 2020 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Boston has assembled groups of priests — living together in strategic locations close to hospitals— to administer the anointing of the sick to COVID-19 patients. 

Father Tom Macdonald, vice-rector of St. John’s Seminary in Boston, is one of the priests to have volunteered for the assignment.

“It’s a wonderful experience of priestly fraternity to live in the house. It’s sort of like— I would imagine— living as a firefighter in a firehouse. We’re here, we get calls, we rush out, we come back,” he told CNA.

The volunteers live in dedicated houses with other priests whose sole assignment is to be available to administer anointing of the sick, the archdiocese said. The ministry began the weekend of April 18.

“This is what priests do…it’s an enormous privilege,” Macdonald said.

Suffolk County, where Boston is located, had about 9,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases as of April 24.

“We are grateful that our priests are able to visit with the seriously ill in hospitals who are suffering from the coronavirus and to be able to provide the Sacrament of the Sick,” Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston said in a statement to CNA.

“This is especially comforting to families who are not currently permitted to visit loved ones in the hospital and who are being treated for coronavirus. Our priests consider this to be a blessing in their ministry. In addition we have received feedback that these visits have had a positive impact on hospital staff.”

The archdiocese trained some 80 priests in total to carry out the ministry, with 30 priests actively doing the anointings and the rest serving as backup. 

The backup volunteers have been providing living space for the priests— such as empty rectories— as well as providing food and errands for the participating clergy.

Father Macdonald has been called to anoint several COVID-19 patients already, and each time the hospital staff has assisted him in donning and removing the necessary protective gear according to hospital’s protocols.

He said all the priests have been trained to minimize time spent in the patient’s room. The priest prays most of the ritual on the doorstep, he said.

The priest then enters the room to perform the actual anointing, which is done with a cotton swab, dipped in the holy oil, and administered on the patient’s foot.

Macdonald said he and his fellow priests are constantly “sharing notes” on their experiences at the hospitals, since each institution has slightly different protocols and equipment.

“It’s very hard being a priest and not being able to celebrate the sacraments for the people, so this opportunity is a great relief in a sense— to do what we were ordained to do,” he said.

“We teach the men at St. John’s [Seminary] that priests run into the burning building, not away from it.”

Father Michael Zimmerman, assistant vocation director for the seminary and another priest volunteer, told CNA that he hopes the word will spread throughout Boston about the availability of anointing for coronavirus patients.

Father Zimmerman started on the team last weekend, covering the Cambridge, Everett, and Mount Auburn hospitals in Boston. So far he has responded to one anointing call, and his fellow priest in the house where they are now living has responded to two.

“Once we’re there, the nurses and the medical staff are very appreciative to have us there,” he said.

He said he and his fellow priest— a religious— have developed a routine of prayer in their house, as well as eating meals together and celebrating Mass.

Father Zimmerman asked for prayers for the patients and the priests and medical staff ministering to them.

“We can’t save everyone— medicine can only do so much. To some degree we have to recognize that we’re not the masters of our own fate, and we have to put it in God’s hands,” he said.

“The medical staff is doing great work, but we also have to recognize that they can’t do everything, and that hopefully takes some pressure off of them, recognizing that this is in God’s hands.”

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 25, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Fr. Brendan Buckley, OFM. Cap., had never heard of the Zoom before this past March and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. After his home in the Diocese of Brooklyn became a center of COVID-19 illness in the United States, he learned. 

With the help of two parish employees, he has now shifted much of his parish ministry online, caring for his flock at the parish of St. Michael-St. Malachy despite the outbreak. 

“They’ve got something [streaming] every day of the week,” he said. This includes fitness programming for children, meetings of the parish’s young adult group, First Communion classes, all in addition to live-streams of Masses.

The vast majority of Buckley’s parishioners are immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and other Central American countries, he told CNA on Friday, April 24. Many of them “don’t have jobs that necessarily have unemployment insurance attached,” he said, or medical benefits. They have been especially hard-hit by the economic effects of the virus, and are his chief concern when trying to deliver practical help. 

“People like that are what our main concern is here, because they don’t have anything to back them up,” he said.

On April 24, his parish staged a pop-up food distribution with Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens. Opened in addition to the existing 34 food pantries operated by Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, the parish event saw a total of 9,360 meals distributed to 1,040 families in need, with an additional $2,500 in grocery vouchers given to 100 families. 

Buckley told CNA that as a Capuchin Franciscan friar, his work ministering in Brooklyn during the COVID-19 pandemic is following in the tradition of his religious order. The boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens contain about 60% of the COVID-19 cases in New York City, which has more cases than anywhere else in the country.

Several priests of the Diocese of Brooklyn have fallen ill, and died, from the coronavirus. 

“From my perspective as a Capuchin Franciscan, this is exactly what we want to be doing: directly helping people in need,” he said. “Throughout the difficult times in Europe, the Capuchins were right there on the front lines. When leadership in different cities fled to the hills during plagues, the Capuchins stayed, and ministered, and died.”

Buckley heaped praise on the work of Catholic Charities, which he said have been meeting ever tougher challenges during this crisis, enabling him to more fully live out his vocation as a Capuchin. 

“Catholic Charities has been such a help in allowing us to have the resources to be able to do this kind of outreach,” he said.  

Buckley explained to CNA that he had two main areas of concern when it came to his parish: providing food to his parishioners, and ensuring their psychological health. Hence the pop-up event at the parish on Friday. 

“Catholic Charities has been just amazing in terms of their outreach. They have provided over 1,000 families with food today,” he said. The pop-up pantry was organized with other Catholic organizations, including the Knights of Columbus and Ancient Order of Hibernians. 

“They have been exceptional in their care for those in need,” he said. “I’m just so proud of them.” 

Buckley has not neglected the spiritual needs of his flock, even while he is still not able to celebrate Mass publicly. He is hard-of-hearing–and without one of his hearing aids that he sent for repairs pre-pandemic–he had to work with the diocese to figure out a way for him to continue safely, and literally, hearing confessions. 

While the diocese recommended a space of at least six feet between penitent and confessor, that would not work for Buckley’s situation. He is now hearing confessions twice a week, for two hours at a time, in his office with the door closed. A penitent must make an appointment for confession in order to ensure that the church would not become crowded. 

Buckley said he’s “very excited” to resume hearing confessions. 

“The need for the Sacraments is so important,” he said. “Especially confession and the reception of the Eucharist.” 

Once Buckley is permitted to have public Masses again, he will have a backlog of at least 15 memorial Masses he promised to celebrate for parishioners who have died from COVID-19. 

“We’ve had one after another of parishioners, or family members of parishioners[…] that have died. It’s been a lot,” he said. He has regularly posted prayer requests on social media, to the point where “I worried that people are going to get sick of me asking for prayers for somebody else.” 

In dealing with the pandemic, Buckley said that the most challenging spiritual aspect for his parish is the inability to mourn in the standard manner. 

“They can’t go to wakes and funerals. So, it’s very hard on them. They can’t say goodbye,” he said. He told CNA that he has been dealing with much of the grieving process on the phone with parishioners.  

Despite everything, Buckley insists that his parish has been blessed; blessed with a small, yet smart and capable staff who moved programming online, and blessed with the outpouring of assistance from others. 

“I’m very grateful that there’s so many incredible people out there that are willing to help, volunteer, sacrifice themselves to help others,” he said. 

“We’re so blessed and so touched. God is good.” 

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Denver Newsroom, Apr 25, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- On May 4, the parish community of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Madill, Oklahoma would have celebrated the first anniversary of their new church building.

But on April 22, an EF2 tornado pummeled the small-town church, blowing out most of the stained glass windows and tearing off half the roof. It completely destroyed the parish rectory.

One thing spared though, was a stained-glass window of an Oklahoma native son, Blessed Stanley Rother, a priest of Oklahoma City who was beatified in 2017.

Fr. Oby, Fr. Don Wolf and Archbishop Coakley stand with the stained glass piece of Blessed Stanley Rother, which was undamaged.

Posted by Archdiocese of Oklahoma City on Thursday, April 23, 2020

Holy Cross Pastor Fr. Oby Zunmas told CNA that around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday he returned to his rectory after delivering a rosary to an elderly patient at the hospital. As he arrived, he heard the tornado sirens and started getting weather alerts on his phone.

Zunmas went to turn on his T.V. to get a better idea of the path of the storm, but it wasn’t working.

“As I was going towards the kitchen to see if I have a spare battery or something, then I looked up from my back door and windows in the back and saw how the trees were moving violently. So I knew that that was not normal,” he said.

Zunmas said he immediately ran to the safest room of his house – an interior laundry room. Once inside, he heard a loud bang and the sound of the glass of his windows shattering. When everything was quiet, he came out.

“The first thing I noticed – there was no roof,” he said. The house’s back wall had collapsed on his breakfast table; his three-car garage was compressed, and leaning on his bedroom closet.

The church, he said, looked like someone “took something and scratched it all off.” Most of the windows were blown out; part of the roof was gone. The priest said he’s still not sure if the $4 million new building sustained any structural damage.

“And then the house is almost a $400,000 home, and it’s a total write-off,” he added.

But that wasn’t what went through his mind as he first emerged from his laundry room.

“My first prayer was a prayer of thanksgiving. I thanked God that I was alive,” he said. Since hearing of the two deaths from the storm, Zunmas added, he has also been praying for their souls.

After the storm, Zunmas said, he received calls and texts from concerned parishioners who saw the tornado heading for the church.

Among them were Paul and Kathie Westerman, parishioners of Holy Cross for about eight years. The Westermans live about 15 miles south of town, and they worried as they saw the tornado form and head toward the church. They called Father Zunmas immediately after it stopped.

“We called to see how he was, and his first words were, ‘I’m alive,’” Paul told CNA.

The Westermans said they could not drive to the church that night – all surrounding roads were blocked due to downed power lines. But they came two days in a row to help out and to support their pastor.

“We just ran over and gave him a big hug and said, ‘Thank God, he’s alive,’” Kathie said.

A hug “in the time of coronavirus!” Fr. Zumnas added.

“I don’t care, he’s alive,” Kathie said.

On Friday, the Westermans and other clean-up crews were helping to clean out the debris, salvage furniture from the rectory, and cover the part of the church where the roof was torn off to prevent it from getting wet in the next storm.

The Westermans said they were “very heartbroken” when they saw the damage to their church, but there was one thing that gave them hope.

“The best thing that ever happened was (a stained glass window of) Stanley Rother was still there. He was undamaged,” Kathie said. “Something went through the window right beside him, but his stained glass is still there.”

Posted by Holy Cross Madill on Friday, April 24, 2020

Blessed Fr. Stanley Rother, a native Oklahoma farm boy turned priest and missionary to Guatemala, was beatified in Oklahoma City in 2017.

Zunmas said he has felt supported by the parish and by the Catholic community, including Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, who drove to the parish the day after the tornado.

“People have been very, very supportive,” Zunmas said. “My bishop came down yesterday and then my mentor, my first pastor, Father Tom Wolf. And so many people from the community, our parishioners and members and pastors, everybody came by to help out.”

“I toured the tornado destruction in Madill today with Fr. Oby Zunmas whose rectory was destroyed while he took shelter in a safe room. Holy Cross Catholic Church sustained damage, but is repairable. Please keep them in your prayers,” Coakley said Thursday on Twitter.

Zunmas said he is grateful to God he is alive and the damage wasn’t worse, and that he has been encouraged by the goodness of people at this time.

“We do have generous people who are willing to help. Maybe sometimes they don’t think about it, but when something happens, they want to come together. They want to make sure you’re okay,” Zunmas said.

“And as a pastor, I see that more often maybe than regular people, but I wish that people would know that there’s a lot of good people in this world. I think we know that, but sometimes we just don’t act like we do because we’re so suspicious of everybody. But I think there’s a lot of nice people in this world, and I want people to know that.”

On a more practical note, the priest added, if anyone is building a home in tornado alley, “they need to consider having a safe place. It might be your closet. It might be your bathroom. It might be your safe room, which my safe room is my laundry room…I recommend that people think about not just a pretty home, but a home that is safe.”

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