Burials of Covid-19 Victims

On Tuesday, March 9, four of the members of the Partnership of Faith for New York City, made a solemn trip to the morgue where refrigerated trailers are utilized by the city’s Office of the Medical Examiner for the approximately 300 victims of Covid-19 whose bodies remain unburied. This partnership among the three great Abrahamic faiths is devoted to working together for the welfare of the City.

These leaders of some of the City’s largest religious institutions made the journey to offer prayers as a first step to providing dignified committal and burial services for these our neighbors, some of whom have no family or whose family cannot provide funeral costs. As in life, when the poorest of New York communities were and remain disproportionately ravaged by Covid, so it is that some of our poorest neighbors’ bodies remain unburied or unclaimed.

The plan to provide burial was conceived by a member of one of the Partnership’s congregations and then embraced by the congregation’s leadership. We too have committed ourselves to join in this effort. Burial, cremation, burial plots and places in memorial gardens or columbaria are all needed as are funds to defray the costs of these. If you feel led to join in this effort, I hope you will let me know in the comments below.