Along restaurant-laden streets in one of Guadalajara’s noted culinary districts, where many eateries are shuttered these days due to government “stay at home” directives, traffic is of course sparser than usual.

At first we were told categorically that only people with coroanvirus symptoms, or those caring for the sick, need wear masks during the current pandemic.

In mid-January, when Mercedes Bern-Klug, a professor of social work at the University of Iowa, began teaching master’s students at the University of Guadalajara, she thought she had arrived in paradise, she said.

With both the apex of the virus crisis and that of the Christian year fast approaching, churches are hurrying to adapt.

Among local learning institutions, the reaction to Covid-19 ranges from simply closing the doors, to a seat-of-the-pants attempt to go online, all the way to a tech-savvy, energetic migration to the internet. 

In 2019, a 25-year-old religious accord between Anglicans in Mexico and Episcopalians in the United States, which afforded financial support to Mexico, among other provisions, finally wound down.