The Covid-19 pandemic has brought religious practice to a halt in much of the world. Religious leaders, a large part of whose life’s work is to get people to come to church, mosque or synagogue are urging them to stay away. The church, defined by Jesus as wherever people gather together in God’s name, has been suspended. The gestures that carry much of the meaning of the faith – for Christians, the exchange of the Pax Christi, for example, or the taking of Holy Communion – were banned in many countries even before the general population was ordered into isolation. Now, in lockdown France you are allowed to go to work (if you do not have the possibility of working from home), you can go and buy what you want at the supermarket, but you are not allowed to attend a funeral.

But what is shaping into the most catastrophic pandemic of modern times is hitting a world that now has social media. Religious leaders, who may not have known their WhatsApp from their Facetime two weeks ago, are seizing social media as a lifeline.
France is one of the worst hit countries in Europe and has the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Europe. For Heart and Soul on the BBC World Service we hear how a community of St Martin priests who live together in a super-presbytery in the medieval market town of Nogent-le-Roi, a rabbi and an imam, are keeping worship alive as they struggle to minister to the faithful though the darkening days of the Coronavirus Crisis.
Produced and presented by John Laurenson.

(Photo: French Priests check camera for live Palm Sunday YouTube mass. Credit: BBC)