How the local church has gone digital and conventional simultaneously

The Italian flag hangs from a window during the coronavirus lockdown, with the phrase “everything will be alright” in Italian. Creative Commons photo.

ROME — To combat the novel coronavirus, Italy is on lockdown and so is the country’s Catholic Church, which has suspended the celebration of public Masses. In response, the Church is turning to digital technology  to continue its pastoral ministry.

As of March 27, Italy had 80,598 confirmed cases, surpassed only by the U.S. on Thursday. Italy has recorded 8,215 deaths so far, mostly in the north.

Masses are now streamed on Facebook and YouTube, while parishes and dioceses also use social media to offer daily prayer.

“But there’s a limit,” explains Father Roberto Quero, a Franciscan Friar based at the Sant’Orofrio Convent in the Molise region in southern Italy. He said that “the Church is able reach older people who don’t know how to use these methods of communication, one way or another . Television is the most official method. There are plenty of channels, like Radio Father Pio that they are able to follow, along with some other famous channels. But we aren’t able to reach them because we can’t leave, and they don’t know how to use the internet.”

As such, digital communication methods may be a viable alternative for regular Mass for younger churchgoers in the better internet-connected northern Italy. But the older generation — the demographic most at risk of dying from the virus — and people in the rural south (due to relatively poorer connectivity) are  more deprived of an online connection with the local church.

While the tech-savvy congregation virtually attend Mass via Facebook live with the minister they know and had regularly seen before the lockdown, the elderly congregation tunes into Father Pio on the radio to hear from a minister they have never met. The Facebook page receives direct messages during Mass and daily prayer, and the ministers tend to private messages as well. With the diocese sharing local streams, local Mass has reached churchgoers across the district lines, introducing neighbors and neighboring ministers. The local church community has expanded online for those who can access it.  

Some churches are also reverting to other, more bygone forms of outreach to serve disconnected segments of the population. For example,  Friar Quero’s churches without internet access in populated centers have been using loudspeakers to recite prayers.

“This is a way to be close to people because people need to feel affection, because the Church community is actually like a family,” Quero said.

These methods, however, still leave much of Friar Quero’s congregation out of touch, his convent being more than a mile from the closest town.  To reach them, he finds that word of mouth still works wonders, via WhatsApp groups, or using the telephone to reach those with limited technological savvy.

His congregation does their best to reach the convent through more traditional methods as well. The holiday celebrating Saint Joseph, the patron saint of the mountain village in which Friar Quero’s convent resides, fell on Mar. 19. In place of the regular celebrations, the congregation delivered the typical dishes of the day to Friar Quero’s convent via a voluntary national body known as “protezione civile” or civil protection, which has stepped in to manage the crisis since the lockdown. Through this service, the convent celebrated Saint Joseph’s day along with the village congregation, enjoying the national dish of the day, “zeppola”, a fritter, and the local tradition of “composta” or compote, fruits and vegetables conserved in a sweet and sour brine.

However, in the end, there is no adequate substitute for physical nearness.

“The Church works through physical contact,” says Friar Quero. “It has always worked through physically being with people.”

Confessions, for instance, he explains, cannot be carried out remotely because, at the end of confession, the priest blesses the confessor—and blessings require physical presence and proximity. Nevertheless, the Friar believes that the essence of confession is also having someone listen to you.

On March 20, Pope Francis said Catholics who cannot attend confession in person may confess directly to God at home and still experience God’s loving forgiveness.

Confessions can still also be accomplished by telephone, but the blessings will have to wait until the lockdown is lifted. Plenty of other Church activities that require people’s physical presence, such as baptisms, will have to be postponed as well.

What then is the Church’s message — communicated in various ways —regarding the coronavirus?

“Here we need to be very careful not to instrumentalize the Bible,” the friar cautions. “Personally I don’t believe in visions about the apocalypse or punishment. I think that this virus signals, like the twin towers, an epochal change. This is a moment in which history is telling us something. The Psalms tell us that the faithful man and woman are able to get through hardship with a particular strength, that their lives are rooted in the word of God, like a tree planted near water that bears fruit only when it’s ready. So, I don’t see an explanation of catastrophes in Scripture, but there’s a force that allows men and women to live with hope, no matter the circumstances.”

The first work week of the nation-wide quarantine of Italy ended on Friday, Mar. 13, a fearsome date associated with the Ides of March, the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Cesar and the beginning of a civil war. To help dispel the dark mood, each night at 6 pm in Rome, Italy’s national anthem played from the balconies of apartment complexes across the city. It’s a grassroots initiative that Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi has embraced to lift spirits, establish solidarity and bring neighbors closer together during difficult times.

Catholic faithful, similarly, are using social media to coordinate times to jointly light a candle, sing a song or say a prayer. Friar Quero welcomed the initiative, noting, “definitely, when we return to normality, we’ll have rediscovered the importance of physical gestures.”

Erik Trautman is a recent graduate from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He currently lives and works in Rome after spending five years working and studying in Bologna, Italy. While at SAIS, he was a peer editor and business manager of the student-run SAIS Europe Journal of Global Affairs. While studying abroad in Bologna as an undergraduate at Indiana University, Erik wrote for the Official Study Abroad Office.