Black Pastor Conducts Funerals For People Untended By Traditional Church

One year since the coronavirus pandemic hit, Rev. Irene Monroe is tired. A Black pastor in Boston, she has been conducting daily Zoom funerals — often two a day — since last March.

She's learning first-hand the names behind the COVID-19 data showing communities of color are the country's hardest hit. And she says it all feels sickeningly familiar to when she started her career during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

Back then, she conducted funerals for those otherwise marginalized by the mainstream Black church — in that time it was members of the LGBTQ community. Once again, she's ministering to families of people she calls the "unchurched," many of them trans women and youth, as well as those suffering from addiction and experiencing homelessness.

Rev. Monroe joins host Robin Young to talk about her community and her experience over the last year.