The Pandemic – and lockdown – have presented both religious leaders and faith communities with challenges, particularly with delivery of normal religious observances when faith communities were barred from meeting in common due Covid-Safe restrictions applied by the various states and territory administrations. Here, Religious for Peace Australia gives one video of leading faith communities in difficult times.
The dead are being mourned by an even bigger swath of the population — disproportionately so in some communities of colour. An analysis published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences calculated that each person who died was survived by approximately nine close relatives. Now many of the survivors are facing fresh grief in a world changed drastically by the coronavirus.
The Pandemic – and lockdown – have presented both religious leaders and faith communities with challenges, particularly with delivery of normal religious observances when faith communities were barred from meeting in common due Covid-Safe restrictions applied by the various states and territory administrations. Here, Religious for Peace Australia gives account of leading faith communities in difficult times, from faith leaders in Tasmania.
The most significant change for faith leaders was that services were conducted with visual cues and immediacy being lost.
People are not just grieving the dead, but also the lives they once had. Even as vaccines roll out to certain swaths of the population, the COVID-19 virus and its new variants continue to spread, leaving many to wonder when life will return to some sense of normalcy. Most who become infected recover, but those known as the “long haulers” face a prolonged struggle with lingering symptoms.
