"I got as close as I could, at a safe distance, I prayed for the dead, for the injured, and gave general absolution," he told Desde la Fe, the weekly magazine of the Archdiocese of Mexico.

The elevated metro line, with two passenger cars, fell onto a road May 3. At least 24 people were killed, and more than 70 were injured.

Fr. Ortiz is pastor of Immaculate Conception parish in Zapotitlán, located near Tláhuac where the metro wreck occurred.

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With increasing numbers of people confined at home with no access to Mass or confession, pastors everywhere, Pope Francis included, have turned to some little-known, or at least little-used, concepts and practices, including "spiritual communion," indulgences and general absolution.

There's also, perhaps, a fresh impetus to revisit the idea of "baptism by desire."

All are practices the Church ordinarily has little reason to emphasize, but which increasingly are coming in handy as the coronavirus continues to spread.

From the moment public events were cancelled and Masses suspended in China and Hong Kong, spiritual communion was something the bishops and priests stressed heavily in place of being able to attend Mass physically.

An ancient practice described by St. Thomas Aquinas as "an ardent desire to receive Jesus in the Holy Sacrament and a loving embrace as though we had already received Him," spiritual communion is a way for people to access the grace of the Eucharist if they are unable to physically receive it.

Traditionally, Catholics are required to attend Sunday Mass, while spiritual communion has been encouraged only in certain cases, including parishioners who attend a parish without a priest; non-Catholic Christians who can't receive the Catholic Eucharist; home-bound persons due to illness or disability; and divorced and remarried Catholics without an annulment, who were barred from the Eucharist until Pope Francis in 2016 opened a cautious door in his document Amoris Laetitia.

Spiritual communion was also emphasized by St. John Paul II in his last encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, and Pope Francis has recently urged quarantined viewers tuning into his daily Masses to make an act of spiritual communion.

Though he doesn't do it every time, the pope has frequently recited aloud a prayer for those watching at home that says, "My Jesus, I believe you are truly present in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

I love you above all things, and I desire you in my soul. Because right now I cannot receive you sacramentally, at least come spiritually into my heart. As you have already come, I embrace you and unite myself to you. Don't not allow that I am ever separated from you." Continue reading

But at their November meeting, the bishops did not approve the move, despite some lively discussion.

Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth wrote that the bishops acknowledged that valid conditions required for general absolution "were not generally met in our circumstances".

"What is more important in the Year of Mercy is to reflect on the processes of conversion and the central place in conversion of a one-to-one encounter with Jesus Christ," Bishop Egan wrote.

This encounter, through individual confession in either of two rites, is key to experiencing personally God's love, he added.

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