By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--March 17, 2023
Cover Story | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
It was three years ago today when I was asked to leave my hometown church while waiting for a then regular Tuesday Mass on St. Patrick’s Day, a bittersweet day, forever etched in my memory.
On the previous evening, I had been asked by a friend if I could call the local pastor to ascertain whether Mass would be held in the main church or in the chapel, the following day. When I reached him by telephone, Fr. Ronnie told me it would depend on how many people would be in attendance.
When I arrived early at St. Peter’s Church in my then hometown, there were no cars parked on the street or in the chapel parking lot, so I decided on the chapel. Seeing that the candles were already alight and the wafers to be blessed for Communion were on the table at the back of the Church as usual, I knelt in the pew where my friend and I usually sat for every Tuesday Mass over the past five years.
No one had arrived yet, when a parish council woman approached me, asking, “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for Mass,” I replied.
“There is no Mass here today. You will have to leave,” she answered.
When I told her that Fr. Ronnie had told me there would be a mass today only the evening before, she informed me: “The Bishop only sent word there would be no weekday Masses here only a half hour ago.” The bishop’s message, she added was now posted on the front of the church door.
This was in the early days in the beginning of the 2020 panic of the so-called COVID-19 pandemic.
Being told there would be no more Tuesday Masses not only disappointed but profoundly saddened me.
Brian, who had dropped me off at church was up the street walking our little yorkie dog, Yankee when I came out of the church. Feeling that something was amiss, he and Yankee both came on the run after I had called out to him.
“No More Tuesday Masses to match the No More Sunday Masses,” I told him.
As we were walking back to the car, Brian said, “I think I know where you might want to go,” meaning to the beautiful Fatima grotto of a closed down Catholic church that we sometimes visited.
We drove to the grotto at nearby Kingsbridge, special to me because of the life-size figure of Christ on the Crucifix, overlooking the century old cemetery behind St. Joseph Church, closed by the bishop several years before COVID hit.
Upon visiting the grotto, I had been delighted to see that a dried flower arrangement I had left before the Statue of Our Lady of Fatima was still there a year later when I returned for a second visit on Mother’s Day.
Somehow the flowers had weathered the rain, wind and the snows of a typical Canadian winter in a grotto behind a closed church, where we’d never seen another visitor.
“No more Mass” I kept repeating to myself during the 20-minute drive to the grotto. On site when we came up to the Crucifix, Brian helped me climb up on the plinth, where I wanted to touch the feet of our Lord and Savior on the lonely cross. Having done so, the profound sadness in my heart suddenly lifted.
I knew in my heart that until the pandemic scare was over the grotto would be my only ‘church’. Little did I know back then that closed churches and complications in just even getting to them, would last an infernal three long years when most churches, not only Catholic ones would be closed to all, during a virus that shut down the entire world.
It was during that first year of government-imposed Lockdowns that I came across the online Masses of devout Catholic priest, Fr. Giacomo Capoverdi, at Immaculate Conception Church in Westerly, Rhode Island.
Every Thursday morning, along with his remarkably beautiful cat, ‘Francesca’ this priest of ‘Cappuccino with Capoverdi’ Internet fame, was giving us hope that COVID lockdowns could not last forever.
Because of his online weekday and Sunday Masses, Rosaries and other services, Immaculate Conception Church became my brightest light in a COVID darkening world, a godsend helping me Keep the Faith.
Support Canada Free Press
Over the next three years in COVID Ontario, and up to the present day, Brian and I became veritable “Roaming” Catholics. Difficult as it is to believe, many churches are still closed, and here in Nova Scotia, even though the diocese has posted online that face masks are no longer mandatory, parishioners in most of the churches we now attend, are still wearing ineffective masks.
We live in a day that even when a pandemic is over, churches having lost the majority of their congregants are struggling to keep their doors open to the faithful.
Before leaving, COVID ushered in an anti-Christian era where people in this country and others are arresting people for praying silently outside of abortion clinics and venues offering Drag Queen ‘entertainment’ for children.
Only days ago, a well-known Calgary pastor was arrested yet again.
Derek Reimer was arrested after showing up outside Signal Hill Library Wednesday. The venue was hosting an event featuring drag performers reading stories to children.
Videos showing Pastor Reimer surrounded by as many as 10, gum chewing, sunglass-wearing Calgary cops dragging him across a parking lot as if he were a lifeless mannequin are outstandingly repulsive.
The anti-Christian atmosphere of our day takes us back to the horrors of Roman times.
Meanwhile, three Covid years later, it’s St. Patrick’s Day in a still striving-to-stay-Christian world.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day 2023 to all and for me, especially to Fr. Capoverdi, who, through thick and thin, kept a steadfast Catholic message alive for so many of us—even those helplessly hundreds of miles away.
View Comments