Celebrating an Easter Sunday Marked by Pandemic

Jimmy Dorrell is the kind of Texas pastor who slips into preaching mode within the first five minutes of conversation, who has to tell two stories before finishing the first. His jokes can skip right past you if you’re not paying attention. On Palm Sunday, the fast-talking 70-year-old stood in the middle of Waco’s Webster Avenue, near Baylor University, wearing a light-blue face mask and a black hoodie, surrounded at six-foot intervals by homeless men and women waving palm fronds. Beside the street’s double yellow lines, a tattooed Jesus washed...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis called for solidarity the world over to confront the “epochal challenge” posed by the coronavirus pandemic, as Christians celebrated a solitary Easter Sunday, blending the joyful feast day with sorrow over the toll the virus has already taken.

Families that normally would attend morning Mass wearing their Easter best and later join friends for celebratory lunches hunkered down at home. Police checkpoints in Europe and closed churches around the globe forced the faithful to watch Easter services online or on TV.

A few lucky...