Catholic Church Masses To Resume, Necessary Measures To Be Taken
After the Covid-19 had spread via the congregations of the Grace Assembly Of God Church and The Life Church and Missions, as well as the Shincheonji Church in South Korea, it would be understandable if worshipers are wary of attending church.
4 New S’pore Covid-19 Cases With 3 Linked To Church Cluster, 5 Others Discharged On 18 Feb
So, when the Catholic Church in Singapore suspended all its Masses on 15 Feb, it wasn’t a surprising move.
After just one month in limbo, the Masses will now be making a comeback, in spite of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Weekend, weekday Masses are all coming back
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore announced on Thursday (5 Mar), that Masses will resume on Saturday (14 Mar) and Sunday (15 Mar), while weekday masses may resume on Monday (16 Mar).
Here is the Facebook post in full.
Necessary precautions will be taken
In the Facebook post, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese also mentioned that “necessary precautions” will be taken.
Attendees may be wondering, just what are these precautions?
According to an FAQ on the archdiocese’s website, the precautionary measures to be implemented by the Church will include the following:
- Encouraging attendees to practise proper hygiene and social responsibility, and stay home if they feel unwell
- Conducting temperature checks
- Collecting personal data of attendees in case contact tracing is necessary
The church has also implemented additional measures to minimise risk, such as reducing the sharing of commonly used items and increasing the frequency of area cleaning.
Priests and communion ministers will also sanitise their hands before they distribute Holy Communion.
If a confirmed case or cluster develops, then close contacts will be quarantined for up to 14 days as per usual.
Archbishop William Goh, head of the Catholic Church in Singapore, had previously said in a YouTube video that churches were procuring thermal scanners and thermometers for screening. They also boosted manpower to aid in contact tracing via QR codes.
Blessings from 2 ministers obtained
As to whether the Singapore authorities had given their blessing to the Church to resume Masses, a statement issued by the Archbishop’s Communication Office on the archdiocese’s website confirmed that they had done so.
Both Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong and Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Grace Fu had “encouraged the Church to resume activities”, provided that necessary precautionary measures were taken.
The Masses will be subject to prevailing guidelines and advisories from the Ministry of Health.
Catholic church gives rationale for decision
When explaining why the Church made the decision to resume Masses, it said that it has a “responsibility to minister to the faithful”.
It also assured members:
We will take the necessary precautions to contain and manage the risks, while enabling life to go on.
Note that the Church does not require members to attend Mass. They recommended that members who do not wish to attend Mass can watch the online Mass or “spend time in prayer”.
Furthermore, recordings of Masses are uploaded on the Church’s website on Sunday at 10am and from Mondays to Saturdays at 1pm.
Faith that everybody will be safe
The church clusters that were linked to several Covid-19 cases have been quiet recently which is an encouraging sign. Meanwhile, the new clusters that emerged had nothing to do with churches.
As churches resume their Masses, we hope that the strong faith of the congregants will be proven right, and no more new church clusters will appear.
Featured image from YouTube.
