Empty pews, empty collection baskets: Coronavirus hits U.S. church finances

Like most churches around the United States, St. Anselm’s will be closed on Sunday, its members unable to gather and its priests unable to meet with them as the nation endures its worst public-health crisis in a century.

But just as American churches have been unable to meet their members’ spiritual needs — perhaps most painfully represented in the absence of public funerals for the thousands who have died — they also have faced their own unmet needs in the form of untouched collection baskets.

“We are in uncharted waters, financially,” said John Quaglione, a St. Anselm’s parishioner who is also a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. “There will be some serious conversations and some strong conversations with the parishes and the economic folks to help get us through this.”