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With widespread orders from bishops across North America and Europe to cancel public Masses including the Sunday Eucharist, some naysayers were bound to arise.

In place of The Catholic Register’s editorial and letters from readers, this week we are turning over this page to reprint abridged versions from a sampling of messages from Canadian bishops to the people of their dioceses as they address the COVID-19 crisis.

Millions are now home, sheltered in place, self-quarantined, working remotely, home-schooling, keeping panic at bay but feeling anxiety rise.

A Saturday afternoon walk seemed a healthy idea during the social distancing edicts foisted on citizens everywhere to fend off COVID-19 risks.

Staying the course is an ironic metaphor for an asthmatic whose longest race ever was 3,000 metres.

Every crisis can teach us something about ourselves. Each is a chance to revise the way we live and the way we think about what is important and which people in society deserve our respect and admiration.

I had a coronavirus earlier this year.

Not THAT coronavirus. It was just a common cold, which is one of the many types of coronaviruses out there.

As you read this we will be in the last few weeks of our Lenten promises. If you are like me you have probably slipped once or twice.

Coronaphobia

The coronavirus is dominating world news, shaking all kinds of human activities and becoming a hysteria rarely seen. The fear of it might be called coronaphobia, and it could be more dangerous than the virus itself.

School closures, business disruptions, stock market panic, grocery hoarding and widespread cancellations of Sunday Masses. Few if any of us have seen anything like this.

The Church in Quebec, many parts of Ontario and even in Rome appeared late last week to say “No Más” in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic.