Fort Worth diocese is near Dallas, where three Ebola cases have been diagnosed.

The guidelines include not taking the Blood of Christ at Mass and the faithful not holding hands while praying the Our Father.

The Sign of Peace should not involve physical contact, but some other gesture, the guidelines added.

Priests should use an alcohol-based solution on their hands before and after distributing Holy Communion.

Priests should not distribute Communion if they feel ill, and should discourage parishioners who feel sick from coming to church.

Such restrictions are common during flu season, the diocese emphasised.

But the guidelines did make mention of Ebola.

The US federal government is trying to include faith communities in its efforts to prevent the spread of Ebola, inviting them to join in a conference call on Saturday with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Diocese of Dallas has not issued similar guidelines to Fort Worth's, but Ebola is much on Bishop Kevin Farrell's mind.

He offered prayers for the health care workers grappling with Ebola, expressed confidence in local health care authorities and wrote that "this is a time for our community to respond with calmness and compassion".

Meanwhile, Catholic nurse Nina Pham, the first person to contract Ebola within the US, has received blood serum from a survivor.

A priest at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Fort Worth said Ms Pham's mother told him she has seen and spoken to her daughter using Skype, and that she is in good spirits.

Authorities do not know how Ms Pham contracted the disease, as she is believed to have followed hospital protocols in treating an Ebola patient, who since died.

Sources

• Religion News Service
• Star Telegram
• Image: Real Clear

The priest was Vincentian Fr Joseph Leonard, a lecturer at Dublin's All Hallows College, who died in 1964.

Excerpts from the letters were published in the Irish Times.

One letter, dated January, 1964, only months after President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, shows the depth of Mrs Kennedy's struggle.

"I am so bitter against God," she wrote, but added "only he and you and I know that."

She explained that she did not want to be bitter "or bring up my children in a bitter way" and was "trying to make my peace with God".

She wrote: "I think God must have taken Jack to show the world how lost we would be without him -but that is a strange way of thinking to me."

Mrs Kennedy wrote in the same letter that "God will have a bit of explaining to do to me if I ever see him".

She asked Fr Leonard to pray for her and said she would pray too in an effort to overcome her bitterness against God.

"I have to think there is a God - or I have no hope of finding Jack again," she wrote.

Fr Leonard first met a young Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in 1950 when she visited Dublin.

The two struck up an immediate friendship and corresponded regularly.

In 1956, she wrote to the priest after the birth of a stillborn daughter and said: "Don't think I would ever be bitter at God."

The letters reveal that in the 1950s, Fr Leonard helped rekindle Jackie Kennedy's faith.

But Jesuit Fr Thomas Reese said All Hallows College should never have sold the letters.

The letters should have been burnt or placed in archives for a century, because there is a presumption of confidentiality when a person writes to a priest about his or her spiritual life, Fr Reese said.

The 33 letters are set to be auctioned in Dublin on June 10.

They are expected to sell for well over US$1million.

Sources

• Catholic News Service
• National Catholic Reporter
• Fox News
• Image: The Guardian