For Chris­tians East­er Sun­day cel­e­brates the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus Christ, three days af­ter he was cru­ci­fied and buried.

It sig­ni­fies his vic­to­ry over death.

And as such East­er is un­doubt­ed­ly one of the most im­por­tant cel­e­bra­tions in the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar.

It, how­ev­er, is al­so one of the most fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able for the church.

The Ro­man Catholic church’s high­est in­come comes from the East­er col­lec­tion.

Nor­mal­ly, around $2 mil­lion is col­lect­ed.

But last year was not a nor­mal year.

“In the mid­dle of the pan­dem­ic our East­er col­lec­tion, which is usu­al­ly used for the up­keep of cler­gy, went down by about 80 per cent,” Vic­ar for Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Fa­ther Robert Chris­to told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Last year, East­er Sun­day was cel­e­brat­ed on April 12.

That was ex­act­ly one month af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic of­fi­cial­ly ar­rived on this coun­try’s shores on March 12.

As the coun­try tried to bat­tle the spread of the pan­dem­ic, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced that pro­vi­sions had been made in the pub­lic health or­di­nance which pre­vent­ed re­li­gious con­gre­ga­tions.

The fi­nan­cial hole left by the fall in the East­er col­lec­tion has hit the church hard, Chris­to said.

“We are strug­gling to up­keep the fam­i­ly and al­so give back to the poor which we are com­mit­ted to,” Chris­to added.

At Christ­mas and East­er, the whole col­lec­tion from all parish­es goes to the sup­port of the cler­gy.

“It is for more than the month­ly stipend of $2,500. It is of crit­i­cal im­por­tance that the col­lec­tion be seen as pro­vid­ing for the whole sup­port of the priest—from or­di­na­tion to re­tire­ment,” Arch­bish­op Fa­ther Ja­son Gor­don ex­plained pre­vi­ous­ly.

“The Church is like a fam­i­ly busi­ness. Your fam­i­ly is your fam­i­ly no mat­ter what. In sick­ness or in health we need to sup­port our priests,” he said.

While the East­er col­lec­tion was se­vere­ly di­min­ished, Chris­to said last Christ­mas’ col­lec­tion was on par with what was usu­al­ly col­lect­ed.

“When church­es opened up for Christ­mas peo­ple did come out and we made what was pro­ject­ed for Christ­mas but we need to bump up to cov­er the deficit for East­er,” he said.

The Christ­mas col­lec­tion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.5 mil­lion.

For the years 2015 to 2018, the to­tal av­er­age in­come for the church was just un­der $5 mil­lion.

“The sum of five mil­lion may seem like a lot of mon­ey. But one must con­sid­er it up­keeps ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 priests, ie, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $7,000 per priest per month, cov­er­ing all ex­pens­es— stipend and med­ical care, on­go­ing for­ma­tion, ed­u­ca­tion and study, re­tire­ment and old age sup­port. The to­tal col­lec­tion has not changed in the last four years: the ex­pens­es, how­ev­er, have been ris­ing,” Gor­don ex­plained.

Month­ly in­come from the Cler­gy Pool adds up to $1.5 mil­lion a year, on av­er­age.

The Ro­man Catholic church re­ceived $2,574,257 from tax­pay­ers as part of fund­ing pro­vid­ed to faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions to feed the needy.

Chris­to said around 70,000 ham­pers have been pro­vid­ed to the needy by the Ro­man Catholic church so far and this fig­ure is ex­pect­ed to reach 100,000.

This year, Chris­to be­lieves that the East­er col­lec­tion will be more like its usu­al amount.

With at­ten­dance at the church over the past year was lim­it­ed be­cause of the pan­dem­ic the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain in­cor­po­rat­ed on­line of­fer­ings for parish­ioners.

Chris­to said the parish­ioners have been step­ping up to the plate so far.

He laud­ed them for their gen­eros­i­ty.

“Those (on­line of­fer­ings) have been com­ing reg­u­lar­ly, peo­ple have helped a lot,” he said.

Gor­don said priests are there for us all year round.

“They bap­tise our chil­dren, mar­ry our cou­ples, hear our con­fes­sion, anoint our sick and bury our dead. They cel­e­brate the Eu­charist every day and are there when we need some­one to lis­ten to us,” he said.

“They lead our parish­es and com­fort us in times of need, giv­ing ad­vice and some­times just moral sup­port. A priest’s job is nev­er-end­ing. This is be­cause it is a vo­ca­tion. The priest is re­spond­ing to God’s call to shep­herd God’s peo­ple,” Gor­don said.

He in­vit­ed peo­ple to con­sid­er the life of the priest.

“It is a life of sac­ri­fice. Mass of­ten be­gins his day. Then he must lead the parish, which en­com­pass­es many facets—litur­gi­cal life; faith for­ma­tion; in­volve­ment in the so­cial life of the com­mu­ni­ty; vis­it­ing of the el­der­ly; sched­ul­ing of Eu­charis­tic min­is­ters for sick vis­i­ta­tion; en­gag­ing our youth, en­sur­ing they get a good for­ma­tion; en­cour­ag­ing our cat­e­chists and work­ing with them to en­sure they present the faith in a mean­ing­ful way and for­ma­tion of lead­ers,” Gor­don said.

“He must ac­count for monies col­lect­ed, pay bills, look af­ter the ceme­tery, en­sure build­ings are main­tained, vis­it fam­i­lies, pro­vide coun­selling, com­fort the be­reaved, vis­it schools and form school­child­ren and teach­ers, and he must pre­pare his hom­i­lies,” he said.

Gor­don said many years ago “a sys­tem of sol­i­dar­i­ty” was de­signed, to pro­vide for all of the church’s priests.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly, if a priest was in a rich parish his stipend was dif­fer­ent from one in a poor parish. The so­lu­tion was to cen­tralise the care for priests so every­one got the same. The whole Christ­mas and East­er col­lec­tion goes to the sup­port of the cler­gy. All col­lec­tions, from all Mass­es on these two days, are com­bined with stipends for bap­tism, wed­dings and fu­ner­als, and week­day col­lec­tions to form what is called the Cler­gy Pool,” he said.

The av­er­age an­nu­al ex­pen­di­ture, in sum­ma­ry, for the church in­clude Pay­roll & Stipends—$3.5 mil­lion; Med­ical Ex­pens­es—$.5 mil­lion; Health In­sur­ance Pre­mi­ums—$.5 mil­lion; Ed­u­ca­tion & Study—$.2 mil­lion; Liv­ing & Oth­er Ex­pens­es—$.3 mil­lion.