Across Europe, churches offer empty structures to help fight COVID-19

Church leaders across Europe struggled to maintain Catholic religious devotions during national forced blockades against the coronavirus, but also sought ways, in addition to regular help from Caritas and other Catholic relationships, to have seen resources for services. health and social care.

In Ukraine, Father Lubomyr Javorski, financial officer of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, acknowledged the pastoral role of chaplains, but said: “The church also has many real estate resources which must be used during the pandemic. These facilities can be converted into hospitals, but also made available to doctors away from workplaces and people returning from abroad without a place to spend quarantine. "

Bishop Mario Iceta Gavicagogeascoa of Bilbao, Spain said that, like other bishops, he had been forced to close local churches, but now he was preparing some of them for the victims of the pandemic.

"We signaled the civil authorities' appeal by making available structures and buildings," Iceta told the Religion-Digital Catholic news agency on March 25.

"The conversion of a religious congregation building here is already underway and the authorities are studying how to prepare other diocesan properties," he said.

Iceta told Religion-Digital Catholic that he is ready to resume his previous career as a doctor if Pope Francis agrees.

"The church, as Pope Francis says, is a field hospital - isn't this a good opportunity to distribute the services of this hospital?" said the 55-year-old bishop, who trained as a surgeon before his ordination and sits at the Bilbao Academy of Medical Sciences.

“I haven't practiced medicine for a long time and I need to catch up with current progress. But if it were necessary and there was no better solution, in my mind there is no doubt that I would offer to take it back. "

In Italy, television channels have shown that the church of San Giuseppe in Seriate was used as a deposit for coffins, which were subsequently collected by military trucks for cremation while local authorities fought against the extent of the deaths.

In Germany, a diocese in the south said it had opened a telephone line for needs ranging from shopping to looking after children, while Benedictine nuns in Bavaria said on March 26 that they manufacture 100 reusable respiratory masks for local hospitals every day.

In Portugal, dioceses have offered seminar rooms and other facilities to health workers and civil protection groups.

The Catholic news agency Ecclesia reported on March 26 that the diocese of Guarda in Portugal had delivered its apostolic center for "emergency care", while the Oficina technical college of the Jesuit order in Lisbon said it was producing visors with 3D technology for local medical centers.

"The manufacture of visors immediately sparked interest from other sectors, such as firefighters, municipal officials and security forces," said school director Miguel Sa Carneiro in Ecclesia. “Former students whose companies have this equipment are making it available and we are creating a partnership network to allow for greater production