VATICAN (Agencies): In the face of the spread of Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) across Italy, the country’s government placed the entire country under lockdown on March 9, restricting travel and public gatherings—including schools and sporting events, news media reported. CNN reported that the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, extended the controls already in place in the north of the country saying.
“All the measures of the red zones are now extended to all of the national territory,” the prime minister said.
The measures came into effect after the death toll from Covid-19 jumped from 366 to 463 on March 9.
The BBC reported him as saying that the best thing was for people to stay at home. “We’re having an important growth in infection… and of deaths…The whole of Italy will become a protected zone,” he said.
This followed the imposition of a lockdown on the country’s northern regions on the weekend of March 7 to 8, affecting some 15 to 16 million people across Lombardy as well as 14 other provinces.
Pope Francis livestreamed his March 8 Sunday general audience and Angelus from the papal library “to avoid the risk of spreading the Covid-19 coronavirus,” given the crowding that occurs at the security checkpoints as St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican explained.
However, the pope did go to the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square to wave and to bless the pilgrims who showed up anyway.
The Italian government and Vatican City State health services asked people throughout Italy to avoid large gatherings, particularly indoors, and to keep a meter’s distance between people in public in the hopes of slowing the spread of the virus.
Pope Francis began his Angelus address acknowledging that “it’s a bit odd, today’s Angelus prayer with the pope ‘caged’ in the library,” but he said he could see there were people in the square and he was with all those who were praying with him.
“I am close in prayer to the people who are suffering from the current coronavirus epidemic and all those who are caring for them,” the pope said.
“I am close in prayer to the people who are suffering from the current coronavirus epidemic and all those who are caring for them,” the pope said.
— Pope Francis
“I join my brother bishops in encouraging the faithful to live this difficult moment with the strength of faith, the certainty of hope and the fervour of charity,” he said.
“May this season of Lent help us give everything a gospel sense, even this moment of trial and suffering,” Pope Francis said.
Vatican News reported on March 9 that the pope had also decided to live stream his daily private morning Masses at Casa Sancta Marta to be closer to those who are ill, but the services would not be open to the public. The general audience on March 11 was also slated to be live streamed.
Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office explained that they would be available through the Vatican News portal and distributed by Vatican Media to its media partners and to those media outlets who request it.
He said that “those who would like to follow these celebrations, praying in union with the Bishop of Rome” could do so.
The Vatican also announced the precautionary closure, until April 3, of the Vatican Museums; the Scavi (Excavations) Office, which organises visits to the Tomb of St. Peter and the Necropolis under the Vatican Basilica; the Museum at Castel Gandolfo; and the museums attached to the Pontifical Basilicas.
The Italian Bishop Conference also announced that the suspension of public Masses, including funerals, “to contribute to safeguarding public health at this time,” Vatican News reported. However, churches remained open for personal prayer.
Angelo Cardinal De Donatis, the vicar general for the Diocese of Rome, encouraged people to approach the extraordinary situation “with the strength of the faith, the certainty of hope, and the joy of charity.” He stressed the importance of seeing the situation through the eyes of God, as an opportunity to turn again to him and “to rediscover what is essential, to recover the taste for prayer.”
Vatican News reported that he asked Christians in Rome to “offer a day of prayer and fasting, on Wednesday 11 March 2020, to ask of God help for our city, for Italy and for the world.” In particular, the cardinal asked prayers for the sick and for caregivers, “and for our communities, that they might bear witness to faith and hope in this moment.”
As of March 14, more than 17,660 people in Italy had contracted Covid-19, while 1,266 people have died since the outbreak began in northern Italy. However, 72,001 have recovered worldwide.
