Coronavirus: prayer at home and connected faithful for Holy Week in Italy

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Very fervent, the Italians are now living their faith at home and will spend Easter confined due to coronavirus. If the churches are still open in the country for personal prayer times, masses are no longer done in public and contact with their parish priest is made through a computer or a "smartphone".

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On Sunday, Pope Francis celebrated Palm Sunday Mass, which marks the start of Easter week, in a Saint Peter's basilica almost empty due to the pandemic linked to the coronavirus. It will do the same for Easter next Sunday.

Many celebrations around the world have been canceled, starting in Italy , due to the Covid-19 epidemic. Many priests try to provide spiritual assistance to their flock despite their forties, reports our correspondent in Rome, Éric Sénanque . A need that is felt as Easter approaches, particularly followed by Italian Catholics.

In an Italy confined for a month, churchmen do what they can but from a distance, for happy or more dramatic moments like these religious forced to bless the deceased by Skype, funerals are prohibited.

Selfies on the benches to replace his followers

In this period when all gatherings are prohibited, certain priests compete in ingenuity like this parish priest of a parish north of Milan who fixed selfies of his parishioners on the benches of his church to feel less alone, or this priest from a working-class district of Rome which produces almost professional images of his private masses by transforming the numerous surveillance cameras he had installed in his church into webcams.

In this Holy Week, tens of thousands of processions are canceled throughout Italy. The faithful connect to follow Mass on their screen. Italian bishops encourage personal and family prayer at home. " Your home will be your church, " said the bishop of Brescia in Lombardy, one of the cities most affected by the epidemic.

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