San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Our Lady of Sorrows feels members’ COVID sorrow
NEW YORK — For nearly two decades, Juan Tapia, head of maintenance at Our Lady of Sorrows, has taken pride in the upkeep of the Roman Catholic church he considers his second home. But in recent months, he’s made it his mission to scrub every corner.
“The experience of all those deaths we had to live through makes me want to do my job with great care, because I don’t want anyone to get infected,” said Tapia, who sometimes wears a hazmat suit to sanitize the pews between services.
More than 100 congregants of the parish in the mostly Latino Corona neighborhood of Queens died of COVID-19, many of them in the early days of the pandemic. And Tapia’s family was not spared.
Tapia’s son, Juan Jr., had worked with him at the church. His son was diagnosed with lung cancer before he contracted the virus that infected the whole family; he died on May 6, the anniversary of his baptism more than 20 years before. He was 27 years old.
“No family should have to go through this,” said his father.
The depth of the sorrows of Our Lady of Sorrows has become apparent in the months
since this nearly 150-year-old church was a major hotspot in New York City’s roaring coronavirus contagion. Its pastor says the numbers of cases and deaths went underreported early on because church officials lacked accurate information and many people feared the stigma surrounding the illness.
But the church has helped lead the way out of those dark times, setting up a free COVID-19 testing site outside and resuming indoor confessions once it was safe — thanks partly to Tapia’s dedication to disinfecting the wooden confessional. Last week, he sanitized the palm fronds used on Palm Sunday.
“Faith has made the difference here for our people ...
because this church is really the epicenter of the social life and of the spiritual life in this neighborhood,” said the Rev. Manuel Rodriguez, the pastor.
At 17,000 congregants, Our Lady of Sorrows is the largest parish in the Diocese of Brooklyn, which also oversees churches in Queens. Rodriguez said up to 1,000 people typically filled each of 12 Sunday Masses before in-person services halted in March 2020, when the city shut down to contain the fast-spreading virus. Many in the parish — including its former pastor, Monsignor Raymond Roden — fell ill at the pandemic’s onset.
Away from their church, parishioners suffered in silence. Tapia said when he and his wife contracted the virus, they feared spreading it to their already weak, cancer-ridden son.
“We couldn’t even give him a glass of water, a cup of tea, a hug,” he said. Isolating in their bedroom, they relied on one of their daughters to take care of him.
Rodriguez was brought in from another parish in late June and in short order reopened the church, on July 4. “I thought to myself, ‘if we keep this church closed one more day, people here, they’re simply going to start falling apart.’ ”
On the first Sunday of spring, hundreds in masks turned out for indoor Masses as many more listened on loudspeakers outside, bowing their heads or kneeling on the stone steps. People waited in line to be tested, and vendors sold shrimp ceviche, clothes and ice cream.
Maria Quizhpi said she was praying for the soul of her father, Manuel Quizhpi, who died at 59 from COVID-19 on April 9.
The whole family contracted the virus. At one point Quizhpi became so weak that she fainted in the kitchen of their apartment; her husband administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as her 17-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son watched in horror.
“Every time I come here, I thank God for saving my mom’s life,” said Melani Morocho, Quizhpi’s daughter.