From CNA:
At least 60 Italian priests have died after contracting coronavirus
Rome, Italy, Mar 23, 2020 / 10:07 am (CNA).- In the past week alone, more than 3,000 people have died in Italy after contracting the coronavirus. Among the dead are at least 60 priests this month, according to local media reports.
“I pray to the Holy Spirit to give us the gift of light and strength. Everyday I do the Via Crucis asking the Lord … to carry this cross with us,” Bishop Gianni Ambrosio of Piacenza-Bobbio said in an Italian interview.
Avvenire, the newspaper owned by the Italian bishops conference, published the names of 51 diocesan priests who died after contracting COVID-19, and noted that religious communities in Italy had also reported nine coronavirus related deaths.
The majority of the deceased were over the age of 70 years old, and some of these priests had underlying health conditions.
The youngest priest to die from COVID-19 in Italy was Fr. Paolo Camminati, who died in the hospital on March 21 at age 53.
[…]
“It is a tough trial. We are dismayed. We feel great suffering,” Bishop Ambrosio told Avvenire.
“It is a darkness that we must face, but with the hope that God never abandons us, that he himself has gone through all the suffering to overcome it,” the bishop added.
[…]
Bishop Antonio Napolioni of Cremona has recovered after being hospitalized for 10 days with severe respiratory symptoms after contracting COVID-19. He returned to his home March 16.
[…]
“I experienced minute by minute the dramatic crescendo of problems in the situation and the workload on doctors, nurses and all the staff,” Bishop Napolioni recalled of his time in the hospital.
“It is an absurd Lent,” he said. “But in a certain sense perfect. Jesus is in the desert for forty days, fighting with the devil. Lent is not about the beauty of custom, but the profound mystery of the evil, death and despair that exist. But also of the Lord who is there. We must recognize His presence.”
According to Dr, Bhakdi, infectious disease specialist in Germany, the reasons for the high death tolls in both China and Italy is air pollution. Italy has the worst air pollution in Europe and this has led to significant comprises of the lungs and the respiratory systems for people around those areas in particular. Covid- 19 impacts, in particular those systems.
We have not seen similar deaths due to Covid-19 in other places.
Italy also has the Lombardy province highly settled with Chinese. PC kills…
Mother Jones in a recent article had a medical professional working in an active severe-case COVID ward in a New Orleans hospital. He described what was like for these patients:
Sound familiar? It sounds like what it is like to die in a crucifixion, where the person on the cross is asphyxiated in their own fluids… blood and water. (What came gushing forth when Longinus pierced His side with the Lance?)
So, these priests may have died in imitation of Our Lord’s death. I pray they realized that their last agony was very much in union with the sacrifice on the Cross… that thought may have given them some measure of consolation. Requiescant in pace.
An Italian priest in Bergamo is reported to have given up his ventilator to a younger person and subsequently died:
https://twitter.com/johnthemadmonk/status/1242197589027676167?s=21&fbclid=IwAR1_XU1XZvlX3zhd43G39kCfbqlEfWgiHpvgIw-zMEgmZIntwczpii-Cquc
Greater love hath no man than this.
Resquiescat in pace.
May the Long Line Never be Broken.