On June 12th prof. Mandes and Dr. Kolodziejska co-organized a hybrid seminar with the Polish Institute for Catholic Church Statistics, which is a member of the Advisory Board in our project. The seminar was titled “Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on pastoral care”. Several participants, including academics, Roman Catholic priests and laypeople joined online. The presentation was followed by a Q&A session.
During the seminar, we examined how leaders and believers of three churches and religious organizations in Poland – the Roman Catholic Church, the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses – lived through the period of the pandemic in Poland (2020-2023) and how they dealt with organizational challenges. We discussed how the analyses showed a wide variation in attitudes toward the restrictions among leaders (priests, lay leaders, church elders), which translated into the forms and extent of adaptation of parish/church life to the new conditions.
We have shown that one form of adaptation has been using online tools such as streaming services or online formation and prayer groups. Churches adapted to these tools to varying degrees and displayed varying attitudes toward their use. We argued that the available infrastructure, skills and availability of staff or volunteers to operate them influenced whether this adaptation was permanent or temporary.