APARECIDA – Inside, there was nothing massive about the Mass: Just 1,000 people were spaced carefully across the pews of a vast basilica that normally holds 35,000 as the Roman Catholic Church tried to protect parishioners from the COVID-19 pandemic.Yet such caution wasn't apparent outside the doors.
Thousands of people found themselves unable to stay away from Aparecida on one of the most important weekends of the Brazilian church's calendar, the celebration of the country's patron saint.A similar scene played out far to the north in Belem, near the mouth of the Amazon River, where even the formal cancelation of a usually immense religious celebration didn't discourage some worshippers — underscoring the church’s challenge of trying to.