Photos: In Peru, thousands of faces at Mass — none now alive

Lima: Archbishop Carlos Castillo on Sunday looked out over a catheral full of faces — none of them now alive.

The cleric had his church filled with more than 5,000 portraits of those who have died in the pandemic that is burning across Peru and South America as a whole, using his broadcast homily to criticise a health system he said "is based on egotism and on business and not on mercy and solidarity with the people."

Church workers spent days filling the pews with images of coronavirus victims, and when the 84 pews were filled, the archbishop ordered thousands of photos more attached to the base of the columns that rise to the arched ceiling.

There were images of doctors, police, firemen and streetsweepers, even an infant. Some hugged their grandchildren. A woman danced with her son.

COVID-19 has taken around 6,700 lives in the nation of some 32 million people — a toll second only to that of Brazil within South Ameerica.

Hundred of them have died without receiving help from the health system, and many families have faced financial ruin due to the cost of trying to care for the ill.

The nation as a whole faces a projected economic contraction of 12% this year, and Castillo called for solidarity with the poor.

"An even harder moment is coming," Castillo said. "It would be terrible if in the times to come we have thousands of these photos — but dead of hunger."

The Archbishop of Lima Carlos Castillo swings a censer over several of the more than 5 thousand portraits of COVID-19 victims during the Corpus Christi Mass at the Cathedral of Lima.

Workers hold a wood panel after sticking on it portraits of people who died due to the COVID-19, inside the Cathedral.

A workers walk next to portraits of people who died due to the COVID-19, inside the Cathedral, in Lima.

Camila Ronceros, worker of the press team of Lima’s archdioceses, prints portraits of people who died due to the COVID-19, inside the Cathedral, in Lima.

Archbishop Carlos Castillo blesses thousands of photographs of Peru's victims of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) attached on pews and the walls of the Cathedral of Lima.

A man walks among portraits of people who died due to the COVID-19, inside the Cathedral, in Lima.