LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The familiar smudges of ash on people's foreheads are absent this Ash Wednesday as Catholic churches around the world adjust their traditions in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Normally in the United States, we're used to getting a smudge on the forehead," Father Steven Reeves, the associate pastor at St. Boniface and St. Patrick in Louisville, said. "What we've been instructed to do this year is to sprinkle the ashes instead on the top of the head."
Reeves admitted to those attending Wednesday's noon mass at St. Boniface he had never distributed ashes like this but cited the need to adapt to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
It is not just churches in Louisville that will be sprinkling ashes instead of smudging them this year.
"We actually received instructions from Rome," Reeves said. "So the congregation in the Vatican that supervises the liturgy and stuff sent stuff out to everybody saying this is the way you should do it this year for Ash Wednesday."
Reeves said he has heard of cases where people have been uneasy about changing a long-standing tradition, but said the sprinkling of ashes is not a new concept either.
"The way we did it this year of sprinkling is also an ancient tradition in the Church that even goes back to Biblical times to the Old Testament," he said.
Reeves said he is hopeful the Church will be able to return to the former way of distributing ashes as early as next year.