by Stefano Picciaredda^*

stefano.picciaredda@unifg.it

In the universe of religious worlds, reactions to the spread of the pandemic have been very different. As it has been observed,^[1] there have been examples of underestimation, exploitation, or even radical denial of Covid-19 harmful effects. Interpretations based on millenarianism have also flourished. Some examples of such conceptions in Africa and Latin America, are examined in the following pages.

1. Two happenings in Cameroon

«L’archevêque garde secrète sa composition médicamenteuse, à laquelle il n’a pas encore donné un nom commercial», remarks a journalist of the DW, a German broadcast. The TV report talks about the Archbishop ofDoula, Msgr. Samuel Kleda, who choose not to reveal the composition of the herbal mixture he created, apparently  effective against Covid 19, and not to “baptize” it with a commercial name.^[2] Since the spread of the news, the Archdiocese of Douala has become an address of Hope and has attracted thousands of people eager to obtain the new natural medication. In an interview with La Croix on April 28^th, 2020, the prelate said he had been interested “in healing illnesses with the help of medical plants of the African pharmacopoeia for thirty years”. He started when he was the rector of a minor seminary, and continued to cultivate his passion even after his appointment as a bishop, first of Baturi and later of Douala. It is important to stress that Msgr. Kleda has never stated that he has found a treatment against Coronavirus, “because there would need serious studies to get to such a conclusion”. With a sense of responsibility, he carried on saying he had abstained from observing the symptoms of Covid 19 and from creating some treatments out of medical plants suitable to mitigate them, “and patients feel better”.^[3]

The news has had a wide echo in the country and abroad. According to the correspondent of La Croix Msgr. Kleda’s recipe has raised great hopes in a country where health authorities are about to be overwhelmed by the multiplication of the number of cases”.^[4] Many intellectuals and media have remarked the goodness of an “African response”. The latter has been compared to the Artemisia-based solution created by the President of Madagascar, another well-known anti-covid herbalist.^[5] Meanwhile, in Cameroon, the evidence of healed or of improved patients is multiplying.  Something that should not surprise, because restorative and anti-inflammatory treatments – which have been proved not to be harmful – can certainly produce an improvement in the patient’s general conditions. This story should be related with a wider phenomenon context: some religious leaders insist on the need to abandon scientific medicine increasingly more. This is not a health-conscious movement that promotes natural care to decrease the use of allopathic medicine chemicals, rich in side effects. It is the systematic and radical request to the faithful to abandon all kinds of diagnostic means and pharmacological treatments prescribed and administered under medical control. The Christian who relies on a doctor shows a weak faith, he performs a “betrayal” towards the pastor and his ability, as an intermediary, to implement the thaumaturgical power of God: “C’est Dieu l’Unique Médecin” as Elisabeth Olangi Wosho loved to repeat. She is the founder of one of the largest awakening churches in the Congo Democratic Republic, the so called Ministère du Combat spirituel, now widespread also in Europe.^[6]

In short, those who take drugs despise God and have no hopes of recovery, according to the pastors of the new churches of various denominations. This is not the case of Msgr. Kleda and of the Catholic Church of Douala, which has implanted and still maintains numerous health centers. But it is enough to take a few steps further, without moving from the second city of Cameroon, to find an example of such unscientific preaching. Franklin Ndifor, was a well-known 39-year old man from Cameroon. He was the head of the Kingship International Ministries Church and had run for the last presidential election in 2018. After the outbreak of the pandemic, he had presided over thaumaturgical prayer sessions in his Church, summoning covid-19 affected and laying his hands on them to invoke healing from God. Ndifor died on Saturday May 16^th 2020, after a few days of suffering and worsening from difficulties. The coroner who examined his body ascribed death to Covid-19, and requested the intervention of sanitation and protection teams, to transport his body safely. His family locked themselves away inthe house to prevent Franklin’s body from being taken away. Meanwhile, the news, quickly circulated and attracted hundreds of faithful to the Bonaberi district. They gathered around his residence and began a spontaneous session of songs and prayers, to invoke the resurrection of the pastor. The same faithful did not let the doctors enter shouting that the pastor was not dead but “in spiritual retreat with God”,^[7] and that he did not have to be buried.  During the day, the tension grew, and only in the evening, with the intervention of the troops and of special vehicles using tear gas, the authorities managed to disperse the gathering and allowed medical teams to enter the house after taking all the necessary measures for safety.^[8] Journalists have reported the dismay and concern widespread among the families of the sick persons who had entrusted themselves to Ndifor. The event has attracted the attention of the international media, but many other cases took place away from the spotlight. The reality of the new churches, “neo-Pentecostal”, “of awakening”, or otherwise defined, constitutes, especially in Africa and Latin America, a galaxy in continuous development, with thousands of denominations, large and small, with a multinational extension or limited to a single suburban area. It is the so-called “Third Church”, which is, according to some observers, the image of the Christianity of the future.^[9] In these churches, relationship with medicine is often characterized by distrust. “I was diagnosed with diabetes, but now that I have approached God I have discovered that diabetes is a spiritual disease. The drugs I was taking were of no use, only God heals”, said Deborah, a Congolese woman resident in Holland, to Julie Ndaya who interviewed her.^[10] In sub-Saharan Africa, this kind of belief has led to dramatic consequences in the case of another pandemic, HIV-AIDS syndrome, especially when the most effective cure – the so-called tritherapy – has finally become available. Among the many witnesses, I have chosen the one dating back to a few years ago and relating to Uganda and its capital Kampala. The coordinator of the Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation Uganda, who is treating over four thousand HIV-positive children and young people, already in 2010 reported the trend “among adolescents and their tutors to let their spiritual guides decide about their medical treatment against HIV / AIDS. Some of them spend every spare moment listening to the Gospel on television, reading the Bible or praying in church. Unfortunately it happens that when they realize that their ‘therapy’ is not working it is too late to go back to treatment with antiretroviral drugs “.^[11]

2. Covid’s plot

With these trends, African public opinion is now strongly disoriented and frightened. The virus has started to run together with the fake news. On March 4^th the authoritative weekly Jeune Afrique published a “top ten” of theories of fantasy that grew up around Sars-cov 2 and how to protect oneself from it: application of sesame oil on the body, consumption of garlic, conspiracy of pharmaceutical laboratories, virus spread via 5G network.^[12] In April the editor of the weekly François Soudan returned to the news, wondering about the reasons why “these theories penetrate and influence the social media of the continent so fast, although this is the least affected, so far, by the pandemic”. For Soudan there is a twofold explanation. One is linked to the cultural peculiarities of the continent:

The disease, especially in central Africa, is often perceived as a weakness. When the pathology is transmissible, it becomes a stigma to be ashamed of. A testimony to this is the following announcement which appeared at the end of April on a Congolese website: “Following the death of his sister at the Makelekele hospital, Mr. […] specifies that the disappearance is due to a long and painful chronic disease without ties with covid 19, as people in bad faith insinuate. It is regrettable to speculate on the illness or death of a third party”. In the eyes of many Africans, coronavirus disease is a “bad death”. Its causes must be sought in curse, witchcraft, revenge, punishment and the night world.

A second reason has a more “global” vision: just like everyone else, Africans prefer

conspiracy, that makes simple things complicated, especially in the eyes of those who don’t have advanced education, an indispensable antibody against fake news about the virus. Adhering to a conspiracy theory removes the senses of impotence and dispossession that an unknown pathogen generates, for the benefit of a false impression of control, of knowledge and of being initiated into a hidden truth.

Soudan cites, as an example of conspiracy theories, elaborated “from above” the one of Donald Trump and Fox News, “according to which Covid 19 was conceived in the Wuhan P4 laboratory and then imported to the United States to bring its economy to ruin”, and the one “of the Chinese government, relaunched by the Russians, for which the virus, manufactured in the laboratory of the US Army in Fort Detrick, Maryland, was knowingly sown in Wuhan in October 2019 by CIA agents during a military sports competition, with the aim of undermining the Chinese economy”.

These theories have effectively circulated, and have been revived by authoritative personalities, at least towards the Catholic faithful. This is the case of the “Justice and Peace” Commission of the Mozambican Episcopal Conference, which, in a document of May 11^th 2020, entitled Reflexão Pastoral sobre o Covid 19, denounced: “The shadow of the doubt about the origin of the virus and the possibility that it was created in laboratory for obscure and unmentionable purposes extends over the wonderful commitment of healthcare professionals around the world”.^[13] The concerns are also about the “new vaccines that are appearing and the real goals they pursue”. Responsibility is identified in the pharmaceutical industries. They do not always deploy the same commitment made by health personnel, that is, by those who administer the drugs that those industries produce”. These considerations are not left isolated, like a sterile complaint, but immediately followed by an invitation to the concrete action of the faithful, which is worth reporting in full: 

The challenge: whatever is the origin of the virus causing the current pandemic, natural or artificial, the time has come to raise your voice all over the world against the pharmaceutical industry’s business on citizens’ health and to criminalize profits thus obtained. It is time to defend once and for all the dignity of every human being and the right not to be used as a guinea pig anywhere in the world. It is time to raise your voice to express well-founded suspicions about the creation of viruses in laboratory to be used as biological weapons or with the aim of achieving ever closer control over citizens. Closure of these laboratories should be demanded. It is time to live closer to nature and to trust that it can provide us with remedies against viruses, which it creates by itself to renew itself, instead of spending a lot of money on research that produces profit for the few, and poor health for many.

3. The Latin American setting

In Latin America, the phenomenon has turned to be particularly serious due to the high rates of the virus spread in some countries like Brazil. Indeed, notoriously close to the country’s main neo-Pentecostal Church, the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deu (IURD), the brazilian president has shared with them some of their positions in refusing medicine and scientific vision on that, as well as for the African case.^[14] It is therefore worthy to remember IURD principles and their belief on the relationship between disease and faith. The rise of pathologies has always been interpreted as a sign of the presence of evil forces in man’s body. A place where physical and spiritual forces meet and where the figth between goodness and evil, God and devil, takes place. Indeed, as Eleonora Pagnotta remarks, “evil is the personification of the devil, who acts in the world, and every miracle, exorcism or conversion is considered a divine victory. Illness, sufferance, physical and mental diseases are caused by being possessed  by the daemon”.^[15] The strength of IURD, similarly to other experiences of the neo-Pentecostal galaxy, is precisely the power of the Christian churches:  to see themselves as intermediaries between man and the divine power, in the duty of “freeing” the faithful from this “possession”. The central moment of the long worship sessions is precisely that of the exorcism, of the “live” miracle, which the faithful can witness, checking weekly the effectiveness of the community to which they have joined:

The IURD action takes the form of offering a spiritual treatment: each temple is defined by the organization itself as a “spiritual first aid”. In Iurd theology, the Holy Spirit performs healing miracles. […] To obtain the miracle it is necessary to awaken the faith of the believer through a series of acts and behaviors well defined by the Church: the economic contribution (tithing and offerings), attendance at the temple, the use of blessed water, the laying on of hands accompanied by anointing with oil. In theology, “healing” means leading people to salvation, removing them from the causes of evil, from demons. This is why patient care and exorcistic practices basically represent two sides of the same coin.^[16]

As it is well known, President Jair Bolsonaro has long refused to adopt rigid containment measures, invoking conspiracy theories and asking people for spiritual resistance. His positions echoed those of the country’s best-known pastors, like the leader of the Igreja Mundial do Pòder de Deus Valdemiro Santiago (a former Iurd member), who declared that the virus constitutes a divine punishment, and of the founder and head of the IURD Edir Macedo, who states that the coronavirus – satanic work – has no power over the faithful who are not afraid of it.^[17]

The closest pastor to the President and his spiritual guide, Silas Malafaia, has daily intervened against the lockdown, source, in his opinion, of social unrest that would cause many more victims than those caused by the virus. This time, however, the faithful have not let themselves be deceived. Some observers have noticed the half-empty temples – open despite the anti-gathering measures -, a situation that has forced the pastors to broadcast the sermons and conceive new systems to collect tithes. On the other hand, as Francisco Borba Ribeiro Neto, of the Catholic University of Sao Paulo, remarked in an interview, it is true that thanks to the pandemic they find themselves confronted with the reality of what the various Igrejas propose: “Fundamentalists see a world full of dangers and hidden enemies. In it, our only salvation from evil is strict adherence to norms and doctrines. The pandemic only serves to reinforce this terrifying vision of the world”.^[18]

In the short and long term, however, by leaving aside the human losses they cause, this kind of visions could generate a dramatic decrease of consent and a more public awareness on both the current Brazilian presidency and the world of “maxi churches”. As the sociologist of religions Clemir Fernandes states, as a matter of fact, behindthe contrast to the containment measures, there is nothing but an economic concern. And a pastor like Malafaia “is a religious entrepreneur trying to protect his interests like everyone else”.^[19] But in the Evangelical world, and in its robust parliamentary representation, there are a good number of doctors and politicians “who know a thing or two about science”, personalities who appear increasingly less willing to accept such a shamelessly irrational policy. The reality, as always, is something complex and contradictory. The IURD’s website offers an overview of research on vaccines and of Covid contrast treatments, without any criticism in the foreground, on the homepage^[20]. Church leaders are currently much too warned about totally rejecting some scientific theories. On the contrary, a more nuanced attitude would be more appropriate. This is because later it may be easier to change it in a way or in another, according to the situation. 

            ^* Associate Professor of Contemporary History, University of Foggia (Italy)

^[1] See P. Consorti, La religione e il virus, 09.03.20; C. Lupi, The Saffron Wave against Virus. The Hindu Nationalists and the Covid-21 emergency, 19.03.20; M. Introvigne, Lesson from the Shincheonji Case in South Korea: Monitoring without Scapegoating, 23.03.20. All in http://www.diresom.net

^[2] Henri Fotso’s reportage for “Deutsche Welle”, 15.05.2020, in http://www.dw.com.

^[3] Jean-François Channon Deenwo’s interview for “La Croix”, 28.04.2020. In www.africa.la-croix.com. See also F. Kouté, Samuel Kleda, l’archevêque de Douala, a-t-il trouvé la potion magique contre le coronavirus ?, in “Jeune Afrique”, 22.5.2020. 

^[4] Cameroon has 16.157 people affected by Covid-19, and therefore is the seventh African country (on July 18^th 2020). Source: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. For a general bibliography on Cameroon see M. DeLancey, R. Neh Mbuh, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon, The Scarecrow Press, Lanham – Toronto – Plymouth 2010. About the crisis in the English-speaking regions see P.K. Bouopda, La crise anglophone au Cameroun, L’Harmattan, Paris 2018.

^[5]  See E. Sari, Andry Rajoelina, VRP en Afrique du Covid-Organics, “Jeune Afrique”, 23.05.2020. 

^[6] See J. Ndaya, «Prendre le bic ». Le combat spirituel congolais et les transformations sociales, Leiden, CEA 2008, p. 94. See also B. Meiers, Le Dieu de Maman Olangi. Ethnographie d’un combat spirituel transnational, Academia-Bruylant, Louvain-la-Neuve 2013.

^[7] M. E. Kindzeka, Panic Grips Faithful After Cameroon COVID Pastor Dies, in www.voanews.com, 17.05.2020.

^[8] J. Nkouam, Franklin Ndifor : des fidèles tentent de ressusciter le pasteur décédé du Covid-19. In www.bbc.com/afrique, 17.05.2020.

^[9] H.J. Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century, Addison-Wesley Reading (MA) 1995; P. Jenkins, The Next Christendom. The coming of global christianity, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003. About this phenomenon see P. Schirripa, Terapie religiose. Neoliberismo, cura, cittadinanza nel pentecostalismo contemporaneo, Edizioni CISU, Roma 2012; J. Robbins, The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, in “Annual Review of Anthropology” 33, 2004, pp. 117-143; S. Picciaredda, Il cristianesimo del futuro? Cenni storici e linee di sviluppo del pentecostalismo contemporaneo, in “Mantua Humanistic Studies”, IX, 2020, pp. 215-240. 

^[10] Ndaya, op. cit., p. 21.

^[11] Ag. Fides, Aumentano gli adolescenti sieropositivi che abbandonano gli antiretrovirali per curarsi da sedicenti leader religiosi. Inwww.fides.org, 09.10.2010.

^[12] D. Glez, Top 10 des « fake news » sur le coronavirus, « Jeune Afrique », 04.04.2020. 

^[13] The paper, not signed, was published on June 9th 2020, and it’s available on www.jupax.org. 

^[14] About spreading of Pentecostalism in Latin America and Brazil in particular, see J.-P. Bastian,. Pentecôtisme et médiation politique au Brésil, in “Revue d’histoire et philosophie religieuses”, 96/1, 2016, pp. 57-70 ; R. Chesnut, Competitive Spirits: Latin America’s New Religious Economy. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 2003; M. Russo, I protestanti brasiliani e la modernità, in R. Morozzo della Rocca (a cura di), La modernità e i mondi cristiani, Il Mulino, Bologna 2010.

^[15] E. Pagnotta, Dal pentecostalismo al transpentecostalismo. Il caso della Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios in Messico, Aracne, Roma 2016, p. 151.

^[16] Ibidem, p. 152.

^[17] Cit. from T. Milz, How evangelicals in Brazil are spinning COVID-19, in www.dw.com, 06.04.2020.

^[18] Ibidem.

^[19] Ibidem.

^[20] www.universal.org

by Cătălin Raiu

mail: raiucatalin@gmail.com

Even if during the actual pandemic all states have imposed general restrictions regarding the conduct of religious activities, Romania is among the few democratic regimes in which the public authorities addressed liturgical recommendations. Fascinated by its despotic power, the state forced itself in the Chalice recommending abstention from the Eucharist. It did not do so for theological reasons, but from lack of democratic culture. Both international and national legislation are extremely precise regarding the regulation of worship: citizens are empowered with religious freedom, a right set at the base of the pyramid which is the rule of law and which is exercised also by taking part in the religious ceremonies conducted according to norms established by the religious organizations, based on their autonomy towards the neutral state from a religious standpoint.

As long as for the Romanian state, the usage of the unique spoon in administering the Eucharistic in the Eastern Churches did not represent a matter of hygiene overtime (other epidemics, viruses and seasonal flues), the discovering over night of the potential to infect during the communion ritual is a nondemocratic approach. Why? The answer lies in the way in which the rule of law was thought and ideologically transformed in Romania by positive or negative approaches against Orthodoxy, but without relying on one of the oldest liberal and democratic rights, the religious freedom.

For recent historical reasons, the states which resulted from the incomplete dismemberment of the USSR and the transformation of the communist countries are weak states when it comes to bureaucracy and democratic culture. The legitimacy of the post-soviet and post-communist political regimes was built in most cases simultaneously with the public reconstruction of orthodoxy (e.g. the Romanian case) or even due to the positive image of the Church in society, the case of Georgia, where patriarch Elijah the 2^nd is still by far the most influential Georgian public figure. When the state fails to politically legitimize itself with the constant effort to expand rights and liberties, it resorts to various forms of cultural legitimacy.

The rule of law in the Romanian modernity

The first academic systematization of the knowledge about rule of law belongs to the British Albert venn Dicey (1888): nobody can be punished unless the deed of which he stands accused is explicitly provided by law. Rule of law is the opposite of the discretionary and arbitrary authority of the people. The people are governed by law and only by law, while the law is not the source, but the consequence of the rights and liberties of the citizens. It is not the state that gives rights to people, but the citizens gifted with rights which mandate the state to watch for the fulfillment of the rights of the citizens. Dicey makes a precious distinction between rule of law in the Anglo-Saxon approach, which is based on the Bill of Rights and has the purpose to further extend rights and liberties, and the French and German approaches of the rule of law, neutrally connoted in report with democracy. His distinction has had a prophetic value considering that the German rule by law hit its apogee right in the ideological foundation of the Nazi regime.

Following the experience of the 20^th century, in which regimes on the course of democratization were dethroned by totalitarian regimes (the Weimar Republic is replaced by the Nazi regime), rule of law was defined eminently as a political system based on the the supremacy of rights and liberties (Joseph Raz).

The preliberal meaning of rule of law was not meant to maximize individual freedoms, but to never reach tyranny. It is a tradition beginning with Magna Charta (1215) and which imposes limits to the political authority. It is the meaning that contemporary non-liberal regimes assume by even postulating a divine vision of the good, especially in the Muslim ones, where the Sharia has equal or even constitutional value. The Afghan constitution, which inaugurates the Islamic Democratic Republic, provides equal rights between men and women, but also does not allows the application of any law contrary to Islam.

Within liberal societies there is no more ruling taking in account the divine right or the natural right. The legislative body is based on the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Human Rights or other documents and international standards. Political liberalism completes the meaning of the rule of law: rule of law, not rule of men. The reign of law is the opposite of the rule of men (a government of laws, not men), because the law is based on reason, while people can act according to passion. The law is objective, the man subjective. Italian political scientist Leonardo Morlino systematizes some dimensions of the notion of rule of law hierarchically: the protection of human rights, political independence of judges, political neutrality of bureaucracy, the increased capacity of the public administration to enforce the law in a professional and transparent manner, the civil control on military forces, etc.

The Romanians begin to know the rigors of the rule of law at the middle of the 19^th century, when the customary Romanian law, mostly inspired from the practice and social teachings of the Church, was replaced with the principles of an imperfect liberalism, which drew its sap from the administrative law rigors, the French variant of the rule of law.

Governing the Orthodoxy

In the case of most orthodox majority countries, orthodoxy represented in the 19^th century one of the essential pillars of the nation’s founding, reason for which states are feeling culturally tied with orthodoxy and define their connection to the majority Church not in terms of religious freedom, but as “the default Church of the nation”. The given Church, preexisting the birth of the nation, a cultural and moral guardian of the political body. The majority of the clerics believe that they are exhausting themselves as missionaries in this role as guardians of national morality and civic behavior and do not question the political regime itself. It is, otherwise, also one of the explanations for which post-communist countries do not have civic movements (such as in Poland, Catholic country) brought to life by the Orthodox Churches. These stand on one hand far from politics, in terms of critic and rationing the political decisions, not clearly stated against or in favor of some political decisions as it happens in the West, and, on the other hand, the Church is too close to politics, doing this immense service to the state, taking its place in many situation, especially in that of the moral and behavior guardian of the society.

For historic reasons, the majority churches have the tendency to mistake their members with the entire population. From a theological standpoint it is a gesture of spiritual maternity, but which also lies against the democratic political representation. Orthodox and protestant churches act, together with the political representatives, as an alter representative of the people. For example, a certain Church can be against LGBT marriages for theological reasons, invoking their own theological tradition, or can make it for political reasons, invoking the evil concocted within the fiber and identity of the people. In the case of the second argument, the Church can either substitute the Parliament, giving voice to the political will of the people, or can feel the dominant position of the people and fall victim to a populist and theologically unfounded rhetoric.

The Romanian state was created simultaneously, in tandem and against orthodoxy: in tandem, because together they created the Romanian nation born Christian. Against orthodoxy, because it confiscated almost all social and civil duties of the Church, deeming it unworthy and irresponsible of being a partner in modernizing society. With the reforms from the middle of the 19^th century, the state dismembered, in the Orthodox Church, what was the most valuable materialization of religious life in democratic societies, American or British, namely the contribution of the Church to the generation of social capital. The Romanian Orthodox Church is unlawfully accused that it never developed a social philanthropy network. In fact, beginning with the secularization of AL. Ioan Cuza (1859-1866), the state took all material resources from the Church, and refused to ideologically observe and benefit from the social capital produced by the Church, in the form of the tightly knit relations of social aid at parish and family level.

Up to the year 2000, the Romanian state was afraid to use, in relation to the church, the phrase religious freedom, using instead variations of the mutual legitimization: The Romanian/national Church, dominant Church and the partner state, etc. The Church did not develop a culture of religious freedom and of the rule of law, because it understood about its repositioning in the center of society with the fall of the communist regime not as a consequence of religious freedom and democratization, but as a cultural legitimacy received from a state. Today, in spite of the fact that entire generations of orthodox theologians studied and activated in the West, the phrase religious freedom still frightens the diocese chancelleries or theology faculties, although it is the most legitimate type of response the Church can deliver to the society, more and more routinized in the form of robotized secularism.

The secularization of the wealth of the church (1863/4) did not only mean the nationalization of the properties, but also the changing of the Church into a ceremonial annex and moral guardian of the society. It divided the Church into bishops and the rest (priests and believers). Subsequently, the politicians privileged the relations with local bishops, while the Church, as an united social body, was not even a source of social capital for the state, let alone a community mediated by religious freedom. Things are not different today, given that many politicians fill their public agendas with spiritual events speculated for electoral purposes, but do not think about the way Church serves society due to religious freedom. The false pietism shown at the celebration of the patron saints is directly proportionate with the real indifference towards the Church as the living community of people associated in the name of religious freedom.

For this reason, May 2020 government recommendations, to avoid the Eucharistic, are in fact the result of a 150-year-old manner of thinking, a way of thinking against the rule of law, meant to democratize society. During the pandemic, the Romanian state regulated the dimension of the religious life (weddings, baptisms, funerals), but did not show empathy with the faithful, by leaving cemeteries accessible to those who wanted to pray at the graves of their beloved ones. In the eyes of the state, the Church is a supplier of ceremonial public services, reason for which the state forced itself in the Chalice, not recommending the communion of the faithful.

Even if the gesture circumscribed to the state of emergency or alert, can be, without democratic bigotry, tolerated on a short term, there is the risk of it leaving painful scars in the social weave of Romania and open new paths to even worse attempts on the freedoms and liberties.

While Germany (April 30^th), France (May 18^th) or USA (May 29^th), did not make worship recommendations, the constitutional control censored the anti-rule of law behavior of the authorities, reminding them that the limitations of religious freedom have to be made proportionate with the purpose of the general restrictions, whereas in Great Britain (May 15^th), the government organized a task-force including the religious organizations and independent experts, to jointly establish the time to lift restrictions in the field of religious life.

The Romanian state is placed outside of the democratic dynamics of a rule of law state and forces itself in the Chalice, which does not seem to be a source of religious freedom, but a mere cultural ceremony. In Romania, the government felt the need to especially regulate religious activities, and forbade the prayer inside places of worship, placing the Christians under the disapproval of the public, making them guilty ab initio for breaking social distancing. Setting aside that this is a political-theological humiliation of the faithful (the liturgy is by definition a private religious event, reserved only to the members of the Church), the common order of the health minister and of the internal affairs minister from May 20/22 of this year (an administrative document with lesser judicial power than that of a law) also provides a total and absolutely wrong redefinition of the public space and the (not) private character of the liturgy. The order distinguishes between private and public religious services.

In reality, international standards of freedom of religion or belief, as well as Romanian legislation, establish clearly the private character of all religious activities as a direct consequence of the exercise of religious freedom and of conscience, without the interference of the state. Even if the theological projection of the liturgy is a public one, the liturgy itself is still private, like the weddings, both religious events being addressed only to the invited people. The legal-political reconceptualization of the liturgy into a public event would mean that the state no longer recognizes its neutrality in matters of religious life, according to law. 486/2006 regarding religious freedom, or even make recommendations regarding the liturgy, such as recently, when they recommended the abstention from the Eucharistic or from giving blessings by keeping a distance of 1 meter. Moreover, the fact that most Churches keep their doors open during a religious service to anyone willing to participate, does not change the private character of a religious manifestation in every democracy.

In equal measure, the fact that religious services are strictly private manifestations, does not mean that the social responsibility of the Church to anyone that sets foot inside the church is diminished or somehow discouraged. But, the simple questioning of the private character of religious services, is equivalent with placing the freedom of conscience of the faithful under the magnifying glass, and creates a very grave precedent for the Romanian democracy. Can we expect the Romanian state to give out necessary instructions regarding the content of the preaches, as it happens in Turkey?

Neoliberalism and anti-liberalism

The way in which religious life was restricted during the pandemic was predictable, given that the actual global political paradigm is characterized, among others, by the politic judicialization phenomenon (Pierre Rosanvallon). The growth of the power of the judges is directly proportionate with the decrease of citizen confidence in the political responsibility of the government. We know who signs a certain decision, but we do not know how that decision was made, given the many interests, bureaucracy structures and expertise on multiple levels. Moreover, executive political decisions are more and more adjusted and calibrated not by Parliaments, but by constitutional/supreme courts. The language of citizen rights and freedoms became a very encoded and bureaucratized one, and common citizens, even those who temporarily populate parliamentary gatherings, do not have, regularly, access to the standards with which the international jurisprudence operates in different fields. In the area of religious life, states that gathered a luggage of expertise and openness towards the protection and promotion of religious freedom did not encounter serious issues of radicalization and social tensions during the pandemic.

In turn, although the neoliberal pattern described above seems to extend globally, in the case of Romania, the executive decisions of the pandemic period have been ideologically inconsistent: there were, on one side, highly conservative gestures, such as the initiative of the Ministry of Interior that the state should safeguard with uniforms and police logistics the distribution of the Holy Light on Easter, which shows that the state wants to be a super-warden of tradition. On the other side, the state denounced with Marxist tone the liturgical gestures considered all together dangerous to the health of the population, forgetting that religious manifestations are direct expressions of the private conscience and that they can only be censored similarly with non-religious ones. The decisions were not made based on the “rule of law”, which is the base of standards and international legislation compatible with democracy, but on the “rule by law”, based on some made up ideological frustrations, pro or against the Church and indifferent to the demands of religious freedom and democracy.

*PhD, lecturer at the University of Bucharest and member of the panel of experts on freedom of religion or belief at ODIHR/OSCE.

by Maria Luisa Lo Giacco*

marialuisa.logiacco@uniba.it

1. Introduction

A world day of fasting and prayer was held on May 14, 2020 to free humanity from the Coronavirus pandemic. The day was organized by the Higher Committee for Human Fraternity, an interreligious organization founded in the United Arab Emirates, that has among its members representatives of the three Abrahamic religions, as well as representatives of international cultural institutions. In the heart of Abu Dhabi, the Committee has created a little town of the dialogue, the Abrahamic Family House, where it was built a synagogue, a church, a mosque and a cultural center, the one next to each other.

The Higher Committee was founded after the Pope Francis’ apostolic journey to the United Arab Emirates^[1]. For the first time in history, a Catholic Pope has gone to the Arabian Peninsula, that is the cradle of the Islamic religion; it was an extraordinary event and, as the Pope himself said, it occurred on the eighth centenary of the meeting between St. Francis of Assisi and the sultan al-Malik al-Kamil^[2].

Pope Francis attended the interreligious meeting organized, during the Global Conference of Human Fraternity, by the Muslim Council of Elders, an important organization of Sunni Islam. As we can read on the website of the same organization, the Muslim Council of Elders was founded on July 2014, and it aims to promote the peace within Islamic communities. According to its site, “The Council unites Muslim scholars, experts and dignitaries who are known for their wisdom, sense of justice, independence and moderateness”; they are engaged in the solution of conflicts and in spreading the values of the tolerance. The President of the Council of Elders is Ahmed Al-Tayyib, the great imam of the Al-Azhar University of Cairo^[3]; in the past he had already met Pope Francis. During his apostolic journey to Egypt, on 28 April 2017, the Pope was present to an “international peace conference” organized by Al-Tayyib at the University of al-Azhar^[4], and the Great Imam has been received three times in Rome by the Pope.

• Freedom, equality and fraternity in the Abu Dhabi Declaration

The Abu Dhabi meeting ended with the signing of an important document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together; the document is remarkable also from a juridical point of view, since it is based around the three principles, freedom, equality and fraternity, that are the basis of the modern idea of democracy.

It recalls that “each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, of thought, of expression and of action”. In particular, religious freedom means dialogue, respect for the other’s faith and for his places of worship, condemnation of religious terrorism^[5]. Freedom is also defined as the freedom to be different.

Equality is described like a consequence of God’s willing; to obtain the equality it is necessary to bridge the gap of gender, wealth, age and it is “crucial to establish in our societies the concept of full citizenshipand reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities”.

The Declaration remind us that the principles of freedom and equality are internationally recognized, but they will be really achieved only thanks to the principle of fraternity. The fraternity, in fact, “embraces all human beings, unites them and renders them equal” and free.

In this document, therefore, it acquires a central dimension a principle that constitutes, together with freedom and equality, the slogan of the French Revolution, the event that marked the separation of the state from religion: fraternity. Of course, from the historical point of view, the fraternité of revolutionaries is something very different from the fraternity of religions, but perhaps it is precisely the difficulty of giving a content to this principle that has made it marginal in the juridical debate. For example, the principle of fraternity is in the art. 2 of the French Constitution, but only recently, a sentence of the Constitutional Council of 6 July 2018^[6], has recognized it as a principle having full constitutional value^[7].

3. Fraternity/solidarity to get off the Covid-19 emergency

With the Abu Dhabi Declaration, the Catholic Church and Sunni Islam show to governments, and politics in general, a vision of society that is rebuilt starting from the principle of fraternity, a principle that has at the same time a religious and a secular meaning.

The same principle is proposed again to politics in pandemic times, and it is pointed out as the foundation for the reconstruction. On March 30, the Catholic Pontifical Academy for Life published a document with the title Pandemic and Universal Brotherhood; in it we read a reflection on the meaning of freedoms and rights. The first ones, during the emergency, turned out to be “intertwined and overlapped, for better or for worse”, but also the rights are interdependent and there is “no right that does not have a resultant corresponding duty”. The pandemic has clearly showed this interdependence but, the document notes, the interdependence does not automatically turn into solidarity. This occurs also in the relationships between the states, that can’t confront the pandemic by reasoning in terms of exclusive defense of the national interest, since a global threat requires global responses. “An emergency like that of Covid-19 is overcome with, above all, the antibodies of solidarity”.

In the same days, the Higher Committee for Human Fraternity proposed a day of prayer, fasting and charity, in order that the world will be freed from the pandemic, becoming more fraternal. The day was celebrated on 14 May 2020 and it was, obviously, a religious celebration, but it was also an event with a political meaning. Pope Francis, in the homily of the morning mass of May 14, said that the Coronavirus pandemic is not the only pandemic that affects the world, since there are others such as the hunger pandemic or the war pandemic; according to the Pope, only thanks to fraternity humanity will be able to overcome the pandemics.

During the pandemic, religions reminded politics of the value of fraternity, the revolutionary principle that underlies modern democracies. In the Italian Constitution, it can be identified in the political, economic and social solidarity referred to in the art. 2. This rule, in fact, recognizes and guarantees the fundamental rights, but it also requires the fulfillment of the mandatory duties of solidarity^[8]. It is precisely the necessity to fulfill these duties that justified the compression of fundamental rights imposed by the government to face the epidemic emergency. But it is the same solidarity that, after the first phase, the cd. lockdown, must be the basis to go beyond the emergency and to plan the future.

* Associate Professor of Law and Religion at the University of Bari (Italy).

[1] Journey of 3-5 February 2019

[2] See Francis, Interreligious Meeting. Address of His Holiness,4 February 2019.

[3] Al-Azhar University is the most important religious and cultural institution of Sunni Islam. The Great Imam is considered to be the most important Sunni religious leader and his doctrinal authority is universally recognized.

[4] See the text here.

[5] About the right of religious freedom according to the Abrahamic religions, see A. Fuccillo, The “Charter of the new alliance of virtue” facing the Covid-19 emergency, 11 may 2020, in Diresom.net.

[6] Decision n. 717/718, 6 july 2018, available here.

[7] See G. Canivet, La fraternité dans le droit constitutionnel français.

[8] See F. Giuffrè, Alle radici dell’ordinamento: la solidarietà tra identità e integrazione, in Rivista dell’Associazione Italiana dei Costituzionalisti, n. 3/2019.

by  Maria Luisa Lo Giacco *

mail: marialuisa.logiacco@uniba.it

1. Pilgrimages in various religions

The pilgrimage is a universal form of worship. All world’s religions have places, which we may define “sacred”, to where believers go to pray, sometimes also to ask for healing or for protection by a disease[1].

In the Jewish tradition, pilgrimage appears as an obligation since the destruction of the Temple, that occurred in 70 A.D. by the Roman troops. In the Bible we can read that through Moses God said to his people to go to Jerusalem Temple to honour him three times a year, during the main holidays. Archaeologists recently unearthed a stretch of the ancient pilgrims’ road, which dates back over two thousand years and which connected the Siloe swimming pool to the Temple^[2]. The mandatory pilgrimages ended with the destruction of the Temple, but voluntary pilgrimages continue to the present day: the believers reach Jerusalem in order to pray where the temple stood. In 2019, nearly one million Jewish pilgrims traveled towards Israel.

The pilgrimage spread among Christians, already in the early centuries. Egeria (or Eteria), a roman pilgrim, in the IV-V century described in a Diary her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Before her, in the third century, Eusebius of Caesarea described in his books the pilgrimages of believers that wanted to see with their own eyes the places where Jesus had lived. In the same period, believers became pilgrims to Rome, visiting the places of the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul. In the Middle Ages, shrines became important not only from the religious point of view, but also from the economic and cultural one, and pilgrimage became a particularly heartfelt expression of the Christian faith. Some pilgrimage routes were drawn, for example the Via Francigena, or via Romea, and the Camino of Santiago. The spirituality of the pilgrimage has come down to our days. The twentieth century witnessed a great flowering of shrines and pilgrimages, and the Popes themselves have given an example by making pilgrimages in many parts of the world. Unesco has declared several religious itineraries as a World Heritage Site.

In the Islamic faith, pilgrimage is particularly relevant. In fact, the pilgrimage to Mecca constitutes one of the five duties of the faithful, obligations which characterize membership in the Umma. This ritual pilgrimage must be done during the sacred month (dhu al-Hijjah), though it is possible to visit Mecca all year round for a minor pilgrimage (Umrah). Among the rituals that pilgrims must do in Mecca one is closely linked to diseases: pilgrims go to the source of Zamzam, whose water is believed to be therapeutic, to drink it and take some with them when they return home. Islam also has other sacred places. The Shiites venerate some saints, and they go on pilgrimage to pray on their graves, as in the city of Karbala (Iraq). Pulau Besar, in Malaysia, holds some sacred sites that sufi pilgrims reach by ferry.

The pilgrimage is also practiced by the Hindu believers: in India the Char Dam Yatra road leads pilgrims towards four sanctuaries and it reaches the sources of the Ganges river^[3]. Buddhism also has its places of pilgrimage, linked to the life of the Buddha (birth, awakening, first speech and death). In Japan, the pilgrimage route called Kumano Kodo leads to an important Shinto shrine: it has been listed in the UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2004^[4].

2. Pilgrimages and the spread of Coronavirus

The Coronavirus pandemic, which affected the whole planet, involved also pilgrimages, for several reasons. During the first weeks, when the extent of the infection and its dangerousness were still not completely clear, some pilgrimages became a vehicle of infection. In Iran, during the first days of March, pilgrims in the Shiite holy city of Qom gathered in the sanctuaries and, showed their reverence for the bodies of the saints kept there, kissing and licking the doors of the sanctuaries and the walls of the tombs, as an ancient custom suggests to do.[5] In the following days Qom became one of the areas most affected by the epidemic, and Iran one of the countries of the world with the most infections.[6] In Italy chronicles report that the first 5 contagions recorded in Trentino in early March are related to a pilgrimage, since the infected people had all travelled by bus to Assisi, together with a friar later identified as the patient zero of the region.[7]

Just to avoid the risks of spreading the virus, pilgrimages, like the other acts of worship that involve gatherings of people, were immediately suspended by all religions. Particularly relevant was the decision of the Saudi authorities, under whose jurisdiction the holy places of Islam are located, to stop pilgrimages to Mecca, both the voluntary ones, and the great annual pilgrimage, which in 2019 had seen 1,800,000 pilgrims gathering from all over the world.[8] This year the Hajj should have started in late July, but the Riad government has decided to suspend it several months in advance. It is an exceptional event, although not unique in history. Over the centuries it occurred several times that an epidemic spread during a pilgrimage to Mecca.[9] In 1865 a cholera epidemic killed 15,000 of the 90,000 pilgrims, arriving then in Europe through some of them.[10] In 2014 the Saudi government has not granted entry visas for the ‘Hajj pilgrims coming from Guinea, Liberia and Serra Leone, countries that were afflicted at that time by an epidemic of Ebola.[11] In general, the risk that such a large crowd could constitute fertile ground for the spread of infectious diseases has long led, in the Saudi authorities, to the decision to impose an obligation on all pilgrims to present, when booking the trip, a certificate of vaccination against meningitis and seasonal flu, and a certificate of good health. Even in Iraq authorities stopped pilgrimages to Karbala and promoted the disinfection of the sanctuaries.[12]

In mid-March, Indian Prime Minister invited Sikh faithful not to go on pilgrimage to the Pakistani shrine of Kartarpur Sahib, closing the borders.[13] In Tunisia, the Jewish pilgrimage to Ghriba, the oldest African synagogue, which was supposed to be held in May and which traditionally gathers thousands of pilgrims from all over the world, has been cancelled.[14]

As for Catholic pilgrimages, in addition to the impossibility to visit Rome (11,000,000 visitors went to St. Peter’s in 2019), pilgrimages to the Holy Land were cancelled (in 2019 630,000 visitors), in Lourdes (about six million every year), in Santiago de Compostela (347,578 pilgrims in 2019) and in all the other shrines, more or less known. On April 24, Belgian directors of organizations treating the trips to Lourdes decided to cancel all pilgrimages, until the end of August, because of “the poor health of many pilgrims”.[15]

These numbers not only tell us how the impossibility of visiting holy sites constitutes a limitation to freedom of expression of the popular religiosity, but they also show us how the suspension of pilgrimages, and in general the blocking of religious tourism, will create a negative effect on the economy.

3.After Covid-19, will pilgrimages also change?

The decision to suspend pilgrimages, together with all other collective acts of worship, finds its justification both in Jewish law and in Islamic law. In fact, in the Talmudic tradition, in addition to the duty to protect one’s own and others’ health, there is a teaching that concerns epidemics. We read: “When pestilence is in the city, stay inside”, which means that, in the event of an epidemic, you must not leave the house. The provisions that impose quarantine are therefore considered compliant with Jewish law, and also the suspension of pilgrimages is therefore justified. It should also be remembered that compliance with state regulations is itself a religious obligation, even more when this obligation tends to protect health and life.[16]

Even Islamic law knows provisions relating to the prevention of contagion in the event of epidemics. An “hadith” of the Prophet Muhammad prescribes: ‘If there is a pestilence do not go to a land, if the land where you are is affected by a pestilence do not get out of it’.[17] On this basis, the Italian Islamic Association of Imams and Religious Guides has published recommendations.[18]
We can therefore conclude that both Judaism and Islam know quarantine in their tradition (and therefore also the suspension of pilgrimages).

The Coronavirus epidemic instead introduces a change in the meaning of pilgrimage for the Catholic Church. In fact, the popular religiosity of Catholics, precisely in cases of danger and epidemic, resorted to intercession, processions and pilgrimages. The sick seek comfort and healing in prayer. Many pilgrimages were born, and still today they are made, to ask for a healing, or to thank for the recovered health.

In the Middle Ages, the practice of incubatio spread: the sick settled in the sanctuary where they had come as pilgrims, they slept and stayed all day in prayer until they recovered. One of the most well-known sanctuaries among those where sick people go is in Lourdes, France, but there are many, and not only in Europe.

Some sanctuaries guard the memory of saints who have been venerated for centuries just as protectors from epidemics. The chronicles say that in 1624 Saint Rosalie saved the city of Palermo from the plague. Saint Roc is always depicted with a plague sign on one leg, while it is said that Saint Rita dedicated herself to the care of the plague victims.

Prayer to a patron saint has always been considered a weapon of defence against epidemics; perhaps the most effective weapon in the past, when medical science did not have the treatments and the means of disease prevention that we have today. In the early days of the pandemic in Italy, an article on saints to be invoked during the epidemics appeared in the online version of the Catholic newspaper “Avvenire”.[19]

A trace of this tradition is also in the powerful image of Pope Francis who, in a deserted Rome, went alone on foot – precisely, on pilgrimage – to venerate the image of the Madonna Salus populi romani, kept in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore; then he went to pray in the church of San Marcello al Corso where an ancient crucifix is venerated because, according to the tradition, it saved Rome from a plague epidemic.[20] The two images were then brought to Saint Peter’s Square, where they were placed as background during the exceptional intercession prayer of March 27, and there they stayed during the celebrations of the Easter Triduum.

The pilgrimage has always been a typical form of religious expression, with a strong therapeutic meaning, which in the case of the coronavirus pandemic seems to have given way to the advantage of a prevailing precautionary attention, which has led to the prohibition of pilgrimages themselves. These decisions will probably change the attitude of the faithful towards these forms of prayer. It is possible that after Covid-19 the way the faithful will consider the places of popular piety will never be the same.

* Associate Professor of Law and Religion at the University of Bari (Italy). 

[1] See M.L. Lo Giacco, Pellegrini, romei e palmieri. Il pellegrinaggio fra diritto e religione, Bari, 2008; Id., Pilgrimages: Law and Culture in Multicultural Societies, in AIMS – Geosciences, 2016, n. 2, pp. 231-244.

[2] Y. Katz, New Discovery in Jerusalem’s City of David: 2,000-year-old pilgrimage road, in The Jerusalem Post, June 30, 2019 https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Ascending-a-2000-year-old-Pilgrimage-Road-593766

[3] See informations regarding the road in https://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=5929

[4] https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1142/

[5] The news, reported by the New York Post, is also on the Diresom website (https://diresom.net/2020/03/02/ranians-licking-religious-shrines-in-defiance-of-coronavirus- spread/).

[6] See P. Tamimi Arab, On Secularization and the Coronavirus in Iran, in Religious Matters in an Entangled World – Blogs, 29 march 2020 (https://diresom.net/2020/04/01/on-secularization-and-the-coronavirus -in-iran /

[7] https://www.altoadige.it/cronaca/coronavirus-trentino-in-isolazione-43-pellegrini-e-15-operatori-sanitari-1.2280336 .

[8]The decision was taken at the end of February, just at the beginning of the spread of the epidemic, and firstly concerned only pilgrims coming from infected countries. See C. Giordano, Coronavirus: Saudi Arabia bans all religious pilgrims and foreigners from virus-hit countries, in Independent, February 27, 2020; https://diresom.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/coronavirus-saudi-arabia-bans-all-religious-pilgrims-and-foreigners-from-virus-hit-countries-the-.pdf. Just a few days later, on March 4, 2020, the Saudi government decided to suspend pilgrimages altogether; see the news in https://diresom.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/coronavirus-larabia-saudita-sospende-i-pellegrinaggi.pdf

[9] See C. Gagliardi, The caution Saudi health emergency in time, in Diresom Papers, May 1, 2020. https://diresom.net/2020/05/01/saudi-arabias-caution-in-times-of -health-emergency /

[10] See M. Buitelaar, The Hajj in Times of Epidemics, in Religion and Diplomacy, April 1, 2020. https://religionanddiplomacy.org.uk/2020/04/04/the-hajj-in-times-of-epidemics/

[11] See U. Siddiqui, Epidemics, war have impacted Muslim worship throughout history, in Aljazeera.com, April 23, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/epidemics-war-impacted-muslim-worship-history-200420210254391.html

[12] See the news in https://www.lapresse.it/esteri/iraq_il_coronavirus_blocca_il_turismo_religioso_kerbala-2521296/video/2020-03-27/

[13] https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2020/mar/15/in-view-of-coronavirus-outbreak-pakistan-suspends-pilgrimage-to-kartarpur-sahib-2116987.html

[14] https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/coronavirus-en-tunisie-annulation-du-pelerinage-annuel-juif-de-la-ghriba-prevu-en-mai-20200421

[15] See the news in https://www.cathobel.be/2020/04/annulation-de-tous-les-pelerinages-a-lourdes-cet-ete/

[16] See E. Martinelli, Il Talmud insegna: “Se in città c’è una pestilenza, ritira i tuoi passi” (Bavà Qammà 60), in Diresom Papers, April 10, 2020,  https://diresom.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/martinelli_talmud_ita.diresom.pdf

[17] See V. Fronzoni, From social distance to Muslim solidarity proximity at the time of Covid-19, in Diresom Papers, April 30, 2020, https://diresom.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/fronzoni-muslim-social-distance.pdf

[18] The document in https://diresom.net/2020/03/05/raccomandazioni-e-istruzione-dellassociazione-islamica-italiana-degli-imam-e-delle-guide-religiose/

[19] R. Maccioni, La devozione. I santi da invocare contro l’epidemia, in Avvenire.it, March 7, 2020, https://www.avvenire.it/chiesa/pagine/santi-da-invocare-contro-l-epidemia

[20] Pope Francis’ twin prayers for an “end to the pandemic”, in Vatican News, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2020-03/pope-francis-mary-prayer-crucifix-coronavirus.html