Chester Sam­bra­no

East­er is one of the most sen­ti­men­tal times on the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar. But this year, the pomp and cer­e­mo­ny which usu­al­ly ac­com­pa­nies the oc­ca­sion will have to be whit­tled down in or­der to ad­here to the Stay-at-Home reg­u­la­tions im­ple­ment­ed to pre­vent the fur­ther spread of the COVID-19 virus.

So this year, the Catholic Church will not be stag­ing much-an­tic­i­pat­ed events like the Palm Sun­day ser­vice, wash­ing of the feet, sta­tions of the cross or even the East­er Sun­day ser­vices.

“This is go­ing to be a very dif­fer­ent East­er for us, un­prece­dent­ed in every sin­gle way,” Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don said yes­ter­day.

He said East­er was a time when all the crowds come out, Catholics and non-Catholics but ex­plained that giv­en the cir­cum­stances, mea­sures have to be tak­en to fol­low the laws of the land to pre­vent the spread of the virus across the coun­try. How­ev­er, he said at the same time, the church will make every at­tempt to ful­fil the spir­i­tu­al needs of mem­bers of their con­gre­ga­tions.

“This year, what we will have are the priests will be in their church­es on their own and the Bish­op will be do­ing mass on tele­vi­sion,” Gor­don said.

But it goes with­out ques­tion that not hav­ing a con­gre­ga­tion present at the East­er ser­vices and the events lead­ing up to it will have a fi­nan­cial im­pact on the col­lec­tions of the church.

The arch­bish­op ex­plained that the Christ­mas and East­er col­lec­tions are used to sup­port the cler­gy in every as­pect.

“So it’s go­ing to be dif­fi­cult not hav­ing the East­er col­lec­tion to sup­port the cler­gy,” he said, adding the church al­so takes up the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ing for the less for­tu­nate in so­ci­ety with the ma­jor­i­ty of funds raised from col­lec­tions.

Gor­don said to com­bat this short­fall in rev­enue, the church is set­ting up a We­Pay ac­count as well as on­line bank­ing fa­cil­i­ties and he is ask­ing peo­ple to give gen­er­ous­ly via these op­tions.

The Catholic Church isn’t the on­ly re­li­gious body af­fect­ed by the East­er sit­u­a­tion.

An­gli­can Bish­op Claude Berkley yes­ter­day said his church is al­so ex­pect­ing a de­cline in tithes and of­fer­ings, al­though the fo­cus is get­ting its East­er mes­sage out to the pub­lic.

Berkley said the plan is to pre-record the ser­mon and try to have it broad­cast on tele­vi­sion or they may do a live stream­ing cel­e­bra­tion on so­cial me­dia.

In terms of the bleak fi­nan­cial ex­pec­ta­tion, he said, “I think there will be a se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial re­duc­tion but I think that some peo­ple would still try and meet their oblig­a­tions and make a con­tri­bu­tion to the church, es­pe­cial­ly at this time.”

He said trustees have al­ready met and dis­cussed ways in which peo­ple would be able to make do­na­tions with­out hav­ing to be phys­i­cal­ly present at any of the An­gli­can church­es.

Since the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions were in­sti­tut­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, the Catholic and An­gli­can church­es have put an end to ser­vices and are opt­ing to do more on­line stream­ing of ser­vices in an ef­fort to keep peo­ple fur­ther from each oth­er but still close to God.