Priests Hold Drive-by Blessings Of Fronds On Palm Sunday

Catholic priests delivered blessings from the back of trucks and motorized tricycles on Palm Sunday yesterday, adapting the deeply Catholic nation's traditions to the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.

- AFP And Leslie Ann G. Aquino

Locals lined up in front of their homes in a district of Manila, which is entering its fourth week of a lockdown that has brought the frenetic metropolis nearly to a halt.

The priests made signs of the cross as they rolled past waving residents marking Palm Sunday, the start of the week that culminates with the observance of Easter.

This celebration will continue despite the spread of the virus, said Bong Sosa, who attended the blessing wearing a mask crafted from a water cooler bottle.

The quarantine that has shuttered schools and businesses and halted all social and religious events around most of the nation will likely be extended beyond mid-April, authorities have said.

Easter is a major holiday in the Philippines when millions typically return to their family homes outside the capital, but heavy restrictions on movement will disrupt those trips this year.