Coronavirus

WASHINGTON -- Use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, approved Feb. 27 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, raises moral concerns because it was "was developed, tested and is produced with abortion-derived cell lines," the chairmen of two U.S. bishops' committees said March 2.

WASHINGTON -- When health care chaplains talk about the need for self-care, they really mean it, especially after this past year.

WASHINGTON -- During a Feb. 22 evening program on CNN, Washington Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory offered a prayer for those who have died from COVID-19 asking God to "grant enteral peace to all our sisters and brothers lost to this disease."

WASHINGTON -- Even with many recent hopeful signs on vaccinations and the reduction in the number of COVID-19 cases, there is no date certain at which the coronavirus pandemic will be declared over.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Having the ability to educate and advocate for her family inspired Joyce Christian of Somerville, Tennessee, to become a nurse. It has been a long, tragic pandemic and the COVID-19 vaccines are finally becoming available. Christian is on a mission to try to encourage people of color to take the vaccine.

WASHINGTON -- This past year as the coronavirus cut through the United States, elderly women religious -- former teachers, nurses, social workers and pastoral care leaders -- were among those whose lives were cut short by COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

ROME -- Of the more than 76,000 people known to have died of COVID-19 in Italy the past 11 months, more than 200 were priests, according to the Catholic newspaper, Avvenire.

Four women religious died on the same day, adding to the sum of eight nuns who succumbed in a little more than a week in mid-December in Wisconsin after complications from COVID-19 as the virus spread in the facility that cared for them.

In a time of uncertainty, one thing U.S. women religious and others who have been providing food during the COVID-19 pandemic know for sure is that the number of those who need food assistance has risen dramatically and continues to rise.

Given the consistent direction of these court decisions in Diocese of Brooklyn and since, we are interpreting the Governor’s order together with the court decisions to mean that under the Constitution, houses of worship have to be treated at least as well as retail, which for us in California means 20% indoor capacity at this time.