Two recent articles in the New York Times portray the self-sacrifice of Catholic priests in Italy and the US during the current pandemic.

On Saturday last, two reporters filed a dispatch from Rome entitled “As They Console Coronavirus’s Victims, Italy’s Priests Are Dying, Too”.

The report notes that while doctors and nurses on the northern Italian front line have become symbols of sacrifice against an invisible enemy, priests and nuns have also joined the fight. It says: “Especially in deeply infected areas like Bergamo, they are risking, and sometimes giving, their lives to attend to the spiritual needs of the often older and devout Italians hardest hit by the virus.”

Meanwhile, opinion writer, Elizabeth Bruenig detailed the work of Dominican friars in New York.

She said their calling was to live in community and then go out to lay hands on the sick, but that all changed once the coronavirus struck. She mentions one friar, Fr Hugh Vincent Dyer, who decided to move into a nursing home to be with the residents and medical staff for the duration of the lockdown rather than be entirely physically absent.