Rome Newsroom, Jul 20, 2020 / 10:30 am
At least nine Catholic bishops have died from the coronavirus worldwide as the pandemic continues to spread across the Americas.
Bishop Henrique Soares da Costa of Palmares, Brazil, became the latest bishop to die of COVID-19 on July 18. He died at the age of 57 after being hospitalized for more than two weeks of treatment in the intensive care unit of the St. Joseph Memorial Hospital in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco.
Da Costa is the third bishop in Brazil to die after contracting the coronavirus. The country's COVID-19 outbreak has now exceeded two million cases. A total of five Brazilian bishops are believed to have contracted the coronavirus.
Archbishop Emeritus Pedro Ercílio Simon of Passo Fundo died at the age of 78 on June 1 of COVID-19, and Archbishop Emeritus Aldo Pagotto of Paraiba, who was already suffering from cancer, died of respiratory failure April 14 in an intensive care unit for coronavirus patients at the age of 70.