As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to bind the world in full or partial lockdown, people of goodwill everywhere are rising to their calling, whether as service professionals, community volunteers or religious.

Just as healthcare workers are being hailed as heroes, the Church has its own: nuns and priests who risk death for the sake of attending to the suffering and the dead; and those who valiantly seek to send a message of hope even when churches lie empty, as happened during Easter time.

If there ever was a time when a lot of people feel the need to be strengthened by faith, it is this.

Perhaps the most striking example of selflessness has been that of Don Giuseppe Berardelli, the 72-year-old Italian priest who died a month ago after giving his respirator, bought expressly for him by his parishioners, to a younger fellow patient he did not know.

Worldwide, Pope Francis’ lonely, laboured but steadfast walk up the wide steps of St Peter’s Square for the Urbi et Orbi blessing on March 27 has become a metaphor for a humble and faithful Church accompanying the suffering, the lonely and the abandoned at this time.

Churches of all denominations are closed, but social media has brought the consolation of religious comfort, even if virtual, to far more.

The Pope’s daily morning live-streamed mass is followed by half a million faithful.

In Malta, parishes and many other Church entities, as well as groups of volunteers inspired by their faith, have been reaching out to address people’s physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual needs. Much of this is carried out in silence and out of the limelight. The Capuchin priests continue to administer to the sick at Mater Dei hospital, substituting their tunics for protective clothing.

The Church has also taken concrete action to ensure the well-being of the elderly and their carers in its homes.

It is providing some 150 carers with temporary accommodation as part of efforts to offer its assistance during the coronavirus pandemic.

The presence of the Church has been felt not only in terms of charity and spiritual solace, but also of justice.

It has taken a strong stand against the government’s inhuman decision to close off Malta’s ports to migrants stranded at sea, which we now know has resulted in loss of life.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna has even taken the unprecedented step of appealing to the Vatican to exert its diplomatic influence on this issue. As he poignantly stated: “We either have a heart of flesh for everyone, or no heart at all.”

In a recent interview, the abridged version of which we published on Easter Sunday, Pope Francis said that the COVID-19 crisis can be an opportunity for the Church to renew its way of operating so as to retain the relevance of its message.

Pope Francis dreams of a Church that, with humility and creativity, is able to put aside the institutional trappings that are no longer fit to fulfil its mission, and to explore more effective and relevant ways and structures of ‘being’ Church in the 21st century.

COVID-19 is an opportunity for the Church – all over the world just as in Malta – to learn the lessons of, and move on from, its shameful past of abuse. From this crisis could emerge the ‘field hospital’ of the soul and the suffering that Pope Francis envisaged at the start of his ministry.

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