Pope Francis spreads incense at the start of Easter Sunday Mass, inside an empty St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. Families who normally would attend morning Mass in their Easter best and later join friends for celebratory lunches hunkered down at home. Police checkpoints and closed churches around the globe forced the faithful to watch Easter services online or on TV. The church would normally be packed with people marking Easter, including the president, prime minister and parliament speaker. Pope Tawadros II, the spiritual leader of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christians, celebrated in a largely empty Monastery of Saint Pishoy, in a desert valley west of the capital of Cairo.

Source: The Standard April 12, 2020 09:45 UTC