For almost two decades, Juan Tapia, maintenance manager of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, took pride in the state of what he considers his second home was located. In recent months, however, he has been working harder and cleaning every corner.
“All that experience with all those deaths that touched us makes me want to do my job with more care because I don’t want anyone to get infected,” said Tapia, who is Mexican. Sometimes he wears a protective suit when sanitizing benches between services.
More than 100 parishioners in the largely Hispanic Corona neighborhood of Queens died of COVID-19, many of them in the early days of the pandemic. Including a member of the Tapia family.
Tapia’s son, Juan Jr., worked with him in the church. He was diagnosed with lung cancer before contracting the virus, which spread to the entire family. He passed away on May 6, on the anniversary of his baptism more than 20 years ago. He was 27 years old.
“No family can be wished for that,” said the father.
The magnitude of the suffering of Our Lady of Sorrows became apparent after this nearly 150-year-old church became one of the main sources of contagion in New York City. Her pastor says that not all infections and deaths were reported at first because the church did not have reliable information and many people feared the stigma surrounding the disease.
Many do not have a residence permit or access to health insurance, and live in crowded apartments, making them more vulnerable to infection. The crisis was exacerbated by job losses and growing food insecurity.
But the church helped its faithful to get ahead, installing a COVID-19 testing center outside the temple and resuming confessions inside when it was safe, thanks in large part to the dedication of Juan Tapia disinfecting the wooden confessional. . More recently, he disinfected the palm leaf to be used in Palm Sunday ceremonies, which kick off Holy Week.
“Faith made a difference for our people, because the church is really the epicenter of social life and spiritual life in this neighborhood,” expressed Pastor Manuel Rodríguez.
With 17,000 parishioners, Our Lady of Sorrows is the largest parish in the Diocese of Brooklyn, which also oversees the churches in Queens. Rodríguez said each of the 12 Sunday Masses could attract up to 1,000 worshipers before the pandemic forced the suspension of in-person services in March 2020, when the city ordered a lockdown. Many in the parish, including its former pastor, Monsignor Raymond Roden, were infected when the outbreak emerged.
Away from the church, the parishioners suffered in silence. Tapia said that when he and his wife were infected, they feared passing the virus to their son, very weak from cancer.
“We couldn’t even go out to give her a glass of water, or a tea, or a hug,” Tapia said. Isolated in his room, one of his daughters was taking care of her brother.
They still do not know if the boy contracted COVID-19 in the hospital or if they passed it on to him. Almost a year has passed and his wife still cannot speak of the death of her youngest son, the only son.
“This pandemic has marked us so much that nothing is the same,” said Tapia. “We live in fear that we will become infected again.”
Rodríguez, who is Dominican, was transferred from another parish at the end of June and soon after, on July 4, it reopened its doors. “I told myself that if the church stayed closed one more day, people were going to fall apart.”
Since there was a limit to the number of people he could receive inside, he rented a large tent that he set up in the parking lot to hold Masses and confessions.
“Confessions give you the opportunity to speak face to face with people and that helps heal the wounds,” Rodríguez said. The church also collected food and purchased cameras to improve the quality of mass broadcasts.
The COVID testing center – a mobile unit that operates seven days a week – is the work of Helen Arteaga Landaverde, a longtime parishioner and former student of the church school, who founded the Plaza del Sol Family Health Center in Corona . Rodríguez asked her for help after another priest tested positive and she contacted the New York City COVID-19 Testing and Tracing Corps and launched the program.
“The mobile unit is today part of the church,” said Arteaga. “It reduces anxiety … and creates the impression that getting tested is not a bad thing.”
Arteaga contracted the virus in April and says Elmhurst Hospital saved his life. When she recovered, she was named CEO of the hospital. Surviving COVID-19 helped her understand the needs of hospital patients and members of her congregation.
“When you mention the word COVID, you feel a heaviness in our church,” Arteaga said. “But now we have the tools: We have our faith, we have the vaccines and we continue to breathe every day.”
On the first Sunday of spring, March 21, hundreds of people in masks attended the masses inside the church, while many others listened to them outside through loudspeakers, bowing their heads or kneeling on the stone stairs. . People lined up to get tested and there were vendors selling shrimp ceviche, clothes, and ice cream.
María Quizhpi said she was praying for the soul of her father, Manuel Quizhpi, who died on April 9, at age 59, from COVID-19.
The whole family, originally from Ecuador, was infected with the virus. Maria Quizhpi became so weak that she fainted in the kitchen of her apartment. His wife gave him first aid while their children – a 17-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy – watched in horror.
“Every time I come here, I thank God that he left me my mother,” said the daughter, Melani Morocho.
The family is grateful to be able to go to church with others who have lost loved ones.
His father “left us a great void,” said Quizhpi. But “we are just as happy, happy because we have another opportunity to live and become attached to God.”
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The Associated Press religious news coverage is supported by the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation US The AP is solely responsible for the content.
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