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Places of worship across Saskatchewan are preparing to welcome back members as the third phase of the province’s reopening plan begins on June 8.
As part of Phase 3, churches and mosques will be allowed to resume operations. Although they were never forced to close, the province limited congregations to 10 people in March. Rather than inviting small groups, many centres decided to hold prayer via online video streaming.
Father David Tumback, pastor at St. Patrick’s Church in Saskatoon, said no matter how many times he greeted people on his screen at the church for Sunday mass, it just never felt right.
“I don’t think I will ever get used to Sunday mass without throngs of people there,” he said. “It’s just such a foreign thing. It just got to a point where I was at peace with: ‘This is the best that we can do.'”
As part of the new guidelines, congregation limits will increase from 10 to 30 people beginning on Monday.
Tumback said internal conversations at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon had crowd sizes increasing incrementally over many months, so finding out places of worship were included in Phase 3 with limits of 30 people was surprisingly positive news.
“To be honest, it wouldn’t even mattered what number was given,” Tumback said. “It was just the fact that we were seeing an increase. That to us was the positive thing.”
Social distancing practices must be upheld, common surfaces must be disinfected constantly and signage will need to be posted throughout each building.
Handshaking and sharing of common objects like the Bible, Torah or Quran will be prohibited.
Not being able to gather has been especially difficult for worshippers who are heavily involved in their religion.
Areeb Faruqi, the president of the Islamic Association of Saskatchewan, said the last three months has taken a “mental toll” for all involved.
“It’s great to see that the province is moving in this direction and we’re at least having some capability to connect with the community. It’s definitely not the capability that we would like to see.” he said.
Faruqi has an extremely tough task ahead of him. While he wants to celebrate gathering 30 people at mosques, he has to figure out a system to turn away the 2,000 to 4,000 people that are used to attending Friday prayers throughout the day.
“Cutting that number down to 30 is not easy,” he said, mentioning online advanced booking as one way to limit crowds.
“It will be a trial basis — we don’t know what the answer is. We’ll have to figure out and learn as we go along.”
Tumback said another unknown is what portion of the congregation will return for Sunday mass.
“There is a group — they’re compromised, and there is a bit of fear and a little bit of anxiety about attending, so they may actually hold off on attending until a little bit later.”
Exact opposite to that crowd is the group of worshipers longing to return to mass.
“For many people, it’s just a sense of being here with other people. They really miss the communal aspect of what we do.”
As every place of worship attempts to navigate a new set of guidelines for phase three, both Tumback and Faruqi acknowledged returning to places of worship must be done in a responsible manner to prevent the spread of COVID-19.