SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Al­though church­es re­opened for Mass with the Pub­lic Health Guide­lines strict­ly en­forced to pre­vent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the turnout of parish­ioners was re­port­ed­ly low.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the Cathe­dral of Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion and the Taber­na­cle of Prayer, both in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

At the Cathe­dral, Fa­ther Mar­tin Sir­ju said while the church can safe­ly ac­com­mo­date about 75 parish­ioners— half of its reg­u­lar con­gre­ga­tion— and still keep with­in so­cial dis­tanc­ing guide­lines, the turnout has been on­ly about one-third of the con­gre­ga­tion.

“I think some peo­ple have not got­ten the HSE guide­lines from the church yet, but we have been hav­ing about 50 per­sons so far, last night and this morn­ing that would con­sti­tute about 30 to 40 per cent of our con­gre­ga­tion,” Sir­ju said.

He said the one-hour mass­es are al­so be­ing live-streamed for wor­ship­pers who choose to stay at home. Live stream­ing of ser­vices was start­ed when pub­lic health guide­lines pro­hib­it­ed church­es and oth­er places of wor­ship from open­ing at all.

He said those in at­ten­dance were very co­op­er­a­tive with the mea­sures put in place to ad­here to the guide­lines.

Sir­ju said for the month of June, evening mass has been can­celled but the oth­er sched­uled ser­vices re­main the same.

“We will close the church short­ly for it to be sani­tised and then we will open back around 4 pm for the 6 pm mass, all the week­end mass­es are on, as usu­al, all the week­day morn­ing mass­es are on for the time be­ing,” he said.

At the Taber­na­cle of Prayer, Bish­op Jan­kee Raghu­nanan said he feels as though his con­gre­ga­tion al­so torn about mass.

Raghu­nanan said the church can safe­ly ac­com­mo­date 100 peo­ple while in strict ob­ser­vance of so­cial dis­tanc­ing guide­lines. The turnout yes­ter­day was 50.

“First and fore­most, we en­sured that the laws as giv­en by the Min­istry of Health, that we obeyed those laws, the mass it­self, wasn’t as nor­mal in that, I think some peo­ple whether they should come or whether they shouldn’t come,” Raghu­nanan said.

He said the church was pay­ing some of its mem­bers to com­plete­ly sani­tise the build­ing af­ter the ser­vice.

Raghu­nanan shared some of his mes­sage from mass, say­ing, “We in the Evan­gel­i­cal Pen­te­costal church, we be­lieve that Je­sus Christ is com­ing back again, we be­lieve that with this pan­dem­ic tak­ing place, my mes­sage to the church this morn­ing is to be ready be­cause every­thing is hap­pen­ing sud­den­ly.”

He said he is urg­ing oth­er re­li­gious lead­ers to obey the stip­u­la­tions put in place by the Gov­ern­ment to keep their con­gre­ga­tions safe.