Fr Roland Colhoun gives Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament in his parish of Ardstraw East in Co. Tyrone as a blessing during the coronavirus pandemic. Fr Colhoun blessed the parish accompanied by parishioners in their cars. Over the two days, the blessing of the parish perimeter took four hours and spanned over 50 miles.
Photo: Ashlene Canning 
Chai Brady and Aron Hegarty
The coronavirus crisis can be an opportunity for parishes to creatively reconnect with people who have lost touch with the Church, it has been claimed.
It comes as parishes up and down the country are finding new ways to offer liturgy and pastoral support due to the suspension of public Masses during the pandemic.
Bishop of Killaloe Fintan Monahan told The Irish Catholic that “the engagement online has brought a lot of prayer initiatives that wouldn’t normally get attention.
“It unifies people and gets more people involved as it reaches more people than normal,” he said.
Bishop Monahan said that people are taking the State guidelines “very seriously and there is a huge community effort to look after each other and pray very hard”.
Reconnect
Meanwhile, Tyrone GAA manager Mickey Harte has appealed to people to use the social isolation as a way to reconnect with the Faith. “Maybe when we have more time on our hands now, we should make more time to pray as well, because I think that will have a big impact on how we can control the speed of the arrival of the worst of this virus,” he said.
Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry said the Church must continue to be visible to everyone because many people are fearful.
“The primacy is the pastoral care of people whether they are in Church or not, as this is not a recruitment opportunity so much as an opportunity to pastor people,” he said.
“We all know the huge numbers following religious services on webcams and so on, but I think it’s important for the credibility of the Church that we’re maintaining a high level of visibility in whatever way we can be of service of people, it may be at a distance but being invisible is not an option,” he said.
Uncertainty
Dr McKeown said that the Church is “doing a lot of work in different ways. Firstly, to ensure that we speak into the fear that very many people are experiencing with the uncertainty in the world. Secondly that we reassure people that the Church has not gone to ground.”
Bro. Kevin Crowley OFM Cap. of the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin appealed to people to be calm and put their trust “in the Lord and Our Lady that everything will come to an end”.
“I suppose there’s a huge amount of fear and anxiety of the unknown and what’s going to happen,” he told The Irish Catholic.
“In this particular time what’s needed most of all is prayer, and I think it is only prayer that will bring all of this to an end. I suppose naturally people are very concerned and rightly so about what’s happening at the moment but please God it too will pass.”
