Copy Desk Daily, April 15, 2020

Hundreds of thousands of small businesses and nonprofits are applying for the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program, including Catholic parishes. With collection plates drying up, parishes race to SBA loans to avert layoffs. "We absolutely, positively need it," says one pastor. "Our collections right now are at about 10% of normal. And normally we just scrape by."

Global Sisters Report continues to hear from sisters around the world about how their communities are faring in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Pausing ministries and living in isolation, even from each other within a convent, are difficult, but while keeping their distance under lockdown, sisters adjust with grace.

"There is no such thing as a prayer in which 'nothing is done' or 'nothing happens,' although there may well be a prayer in which nothing is perceived or felt or thought." These words of Thomas Merton have resonated with Fr. Dan Horan in the darkness of recent weeks: As the suffering of many weighs on me, I'm learning to pray again.

Coping with a pandemic is making the value of institutions very clear, says columnist Michael Sean Winters, who writes in praise of bureaucracies — in the government and church.

GSR talks to Sr. Judith Ann Karam on the importance of being counted in the 2020 US census. It's vital not only to democracy but to Catholic social justice, says the congregational leader of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine. She's part of an interfaith effort to encourage American citizens to participate.

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