The few hundred worshippers who showed up were asked to refrain from shaking others’ hands or holding them during prayers to prevent the spread of the virus that started in China.
In Hong Kong, Cardinal John Hon Tong, wearing a mask, announced the suspension of public Masses for two weeks and urged churchgoers to instead watch them online.

Buddhist Temples, Christian churches and Muslim Mosques have been ordered closed since Jan. 29 in mainland China, where the new coronavirus strain was first detected in the central city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak. Mosques have cancel-ed weekly Friday prayers since January under an order to avoid “collective religious activities.”

The restrictions and dwindling crowds in religiously diverse places of worship underscore the extent of the scare over the out-break that has permeated many aspects of life in the hard-hit Asian region. The virus has killed more than 1,500 people and infected more than 67,000 others, mostly in China, where several cities that are home to more than 60 million people have been placed under lockdown in an unprecedented effort to contain the disease.

A survey released in January showed that the percentage of Catholics in Brazil continues to decline, while the proportion of evangelicals has increased at a higher annual rate in the past few years.

According to the private institute Datafolha, the proportion of Catholics in Brazil currently corresponds to 51%, while the percentage of evangelicals grew to 31%. In 2013, another Datafolha survey had shown that Catholics represented 57% of the Brazilian population, and Evangelicals amounted to 28%. The last official census produced by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics demonstrated in 2010 that the proportion of Catholics corresponded to 64.6% and evangelicals amounted to 22.2%. The institute will conduct the next census this year.

From our sister publication: A Place to Call Home, a new series focusing on women religious helping people who are home-less.

Although the surveys produced by Datafolha and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics are not comparable — due to methodological differences — it’s clear that the number of Catholics is decreasing at a faster rate in the past few years, explained José Eustáquio Diniz Alves, a demography expert who worked at the Brazilian Institute.

“From the end of the 19th century to the end of the 20th century, the Catholic Church lost about 1% of its followers per decade. From the 1990s on, it started to shrink about 1% per year,” he told the National Catholic Reporter.

Alves believes that this process has accelerated since 2010 and now he estimates that the current rate of Catholic decline corresponds to 1.2% per year — with 0.8% of annual evangelical expansion. If nothing changes, evangelicalism will surpass Catholicism in Brazil by 2032, he calculates.

That would be a major transformation in a country that has the biggest Catholic population in the world, with more than 90% of Brazilians identifying as Catholic in 1970.

On Feb. 11, Cardinal Joseph Zen, emeritus bishop of Hong Kong met with Congressional leaders on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. After that meeting, the cardinal gave an exclusive interview to CNA in which he discussed the Church in China, the Holy See’s agreement with the Communist regime, and his relationship with Pope Francis and the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

“More and more, the Church is under persecution [in China]. Both the official Church, and the underground. Actually, the underground is doomed to disappear. Why? Because even the Holy See is not helping. The older bishops are dying, there are less than 30 bishops left in the underground Church, and no new priests being ordained.

“But we hope that [Chinese Catholics] can keep the faith in their families — so we have to say, ‘back to the catacombs!’

“The Holy Father Francis shows special affection to me. In interviews, they ask him ‘What about Cardinal Zen?’ and the Pope says ‘He’s a good man.’ …he says ‘maybe he’s a little frightened, his age…’ I say my age? I’m old, I’m 88, but the age helps me not to have any fear. Because I have nothing to gain, nothing to lose.”

“So I’m—I can sincerely say that I am not—I think the Pope is okay. But I’m fighting [Cardinal Pietro] Parolin Because the bad things come from him. From him. He’s still so, so, so optimistic about the so-called ‘Ostpolitik,’ the compromise.”

Pope Francis released his document on the Amazon region on the 15th anniversary of the assassination in Brazil of U.S. Notre Dame Sister Dorothy Stang, a missionary who defended the poor and the environment.

Her life and sacrifices are emblematic of what many participants at the October Synod of Bishops for the Amazon had said: Women in the region are leaders of both community and religious life; their defense of the poor and the natural environment is consistent and consistently results in threats to their lives. In his postsynodal apostolic exhortation, “Querida Amazonia” (Beloved Amazonia), which was published on Feb. 12, Pope Francis said consecrated men and women in the Amazon are “closest to those who are most impoverished and excluded.”

The Pope devoted an entire section of the document to praising the way women — lay and religious — have kept the faith alive in the Amazon region. But he flatly rejects a request made by several synod participants to consider ordaining women deacons; the request did not receive enough support to be included in the Synod’s final document. At the end of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, and on numerous other occasions, Pope Francis has said Catholics still have not understood how and why women are important in the church.