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July 11, 2020The Parish Council of our church had its monthly meeting on Friday, 10th July, presided over by our Parish Priest Fr. Lennie Connully and discussed the various conditions laid down by the CDA regarding the re-opening of our church for worship.
The council unanimously agreed that it is better to postpone the date of re-opening of the Church to a later date when the situation will improve and the Parishioners will be able to come and participate in the Holy Mass and other sacraments in a more peaceful and conducive atmosphere. We came to this conclusion because of certain concerns arising from the conditions.
The main areas of concerns were:
The exclusion of the distribution of the Holy Communion from Holy Mass (As per the instruction from the Government authorities we are not permitted to distribute Holy Communion)
Confessions will not be possible due to the limited time of half an hour for worship and the rule of social distancing.
There can be only two services per day and the limited time allotted to celebrate the Holy Mass is a maximum of 30 minutes only.
Only 30% of the capacity of the church can be occupied. So to control the crowd pre-registration will be required to attend the Mass. Checking the registration of all who come will entail time and remaining in long queue in the heat of the summer
People with chronic diseases and with temperature above 37.5 will not be permitted in the church.
Worshippers to leave the premises immediately after the 30 minutes service. No private prayers are allowed after the service.
It is mandatory for all worshippers to download Al Hosn application in order to attend the Mass. This is an app developed by UAE government to detect if you have or if you already had and recovered from Covid 19 or if you had close proximity with a Covid patient. In all these cases you cannot attend the worship.
Those below 12 years and above 60 years cannot attend the service.
The church has to be sanitized before and after each service.
To get all these things together we need 2 hours of preparation for each half an hour service and willing volunteers as well.
Remember also that each Emirate has its own Rules and Regulations and we are bound to abide by them. Because something is allowed in one of the Emirates does not imply that it is allowed in Dubai.
Considering all these facts and especially to have a short mass without Holy Communion, the re-opening of the church will have to be delayed until we get a more feasible situation. Our Parish Priest, Fr. Lennie urges the faithful to continue to attend the live streaming of the Mass and assures that the clergy of our parish is praying for the intentions of all the parishioners during their Mass.