The Catholics who reside or are in rehab in a nursing home are not able to go to a church, attend Mass and receive Holy Communion. The same is true for those who are permanently or temporarily confined to a home and unable to leave – the homebound.

Though Fr. Gerry celebrates Mass regularly at the 4 nursing homes currently within the jurisdiction of Queenship of Mary Church, it only happens every other month. And, even in that case, only the residents who can still walk by themselves or be wheeled into a room can attend, whereas the homebound simply do not have that option.

The Nursing Home and Homebound Eucharistic Ministry at Queenship of Mary tries to bridge that gap by bringing the Holy Communion to the nursing home Catholics and to the homebound on a more frequent basis. Usually, a team of 2 Eucharistic Ministers takes Communion to one nursing home on a Sunday, whereas a single minister visits a homebound. Before the pandemics, we had a roster of about 32 active ministers who, on a monthly rotation, were able to visit 3 nursing homes every Sunday. Nowadays, we have 19 active ministers and 4 nursing homes to visit. As a result, in order to keep the single monthly assignment of each minister, we can only visit the nursing homes twice a month.

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