One is a Roman Catholic church in Queens, the other, a Lutheran church in Manhattan, but the COVID-19 pandemic has united both Hispanic congregations in grief.
What We Know:
- Between them, they have lost more than 100 members to the coronavirus, and because of lockdown rules, they lack even the ability to mourn together in person.
- The death toll has neared 40 among the roughly 400 congregants who join Spanish-language services at Saint Peter’s Church, a Lutheran congregation, in midtown Manhattan. The church serves Hispanic immigrants from across the city, and the dead come from across Latin America. Congregation President Christopher Vergara says it has been a challenge simply to relay word of deaths back to their homelands.
- “The last eight, 10 weeks has been a real tsunami, a disaster for us here, between sickness, death, unemployment and just lack of services for the undocumented,” stated Rev. Rick Beuther of Saint Bartholomew Catholic Church.
- Now, with in-person services canceled, Beuther tries to stay in touch by calling dozens of parishioners daily and liaising with chaplains who visit those who are hospitalized.
- “It’s brought a lot of stress,” Beuther said. “Anyone who was coughing or sneezing in an apartment, they’d be afraid that the rest of the group would ask them to leave.”
- With the Saint Peter’s church building closed during the pandemic, the Rev. Fabian Arias has been conducting services online from his home in the Bronx – taking time to read out the names of the recently deceased. He also has conducted a few funerals in funeral homes that allow only a handful of mourners at a time.
- On Monday, Arias was at a funeral home, leading a service for Argentine born musician Hector Miguel Cabana, who died from COVID-19 last week at the age of 74. He had played guitar and piano with several bands in venues around New York.
- Saint Peter’s is among five Evangelical Lutheran Churches in America with congregations serving Hispanics in the New York area that have been hard hit by the coronavirus, according to the regional bishop, Paul Egensteiner. He said the challenges are particularly severe at Saint Peter’s because of the large numbers of undocumented immigrants.
- The Hispanic congregation now based at Saint Peter’s dates back to 1950, when it was formed in East Harlem to serve Lutherans in the growing Puerto Rican community. The congregation steadily diversified to include Latin Americans of other backgrounds. In 2012, due to financial difficulties, it relocated from East Harlem to Saint Peter’s Church, which also offers English language services.
- “In difficult moments, it’s important that we are together,” Arias said. “Of course, that doesn’t mean physically together, but we can be close on the phone, on the computer.”
Some congregation members, Arias said, want to reopen Saint Peter’s and resume in-person services. But it is too soon, too dangerous.
