arrow Corona resident Delphina Olvera selling flowers outside Our Lady of Sorrows Church on Easter Sunday. She said several church members died from COVID. Cindy Rodriguez / Gothamist
On a gray Easter Sunday in Corona, Queens, dozens of people, all of them masked, gathered outside Our Lady of Sorrows Church, the overflow crowd from the mass service underway inside.
The community could use the solace offered by Easter’s theme of renewal after a bruising year of trauma and loss. More than 500 people have died from COVID-19 in Corona, that’s more than any other ZIP code in the city. Several of the deceased attended this church, according to Delphina Olvera, who sold peach-colored roses and white lilies to passersby.