Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Ro­man Catholic Church has wel­comed an in­crease in wor­ship­pers since re­stric­tions on re­li­gious gath­er­ings were lift­ed just over a month ago.

“Peo­ple got reac­quaint­ed, they got ac­cus­tomed to the sys­tem and peo­ple are now ad­just­ing to kind of a new nor­mal­—how to en­ter, how to reg­is­ter and how to man­age the sacra­men­tal work of the church,” said Vic­ar for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Fr Robert Chris­to.

He said the church views the up­take in wor­ship­pers as “very en­cour­ag­ing” and added that all wor­ship­pers are wel­comed at church re­gard­less of vac­ci­na­tion sta­tus.

“We con­tin­ue to be an all-in­clu­sive...church for all, re­spect­ing peo­ple’s rights at all lev­els,” he said.

“All are wel­comed in­clud­ing those who are vac­ci­nat­ed, un­vac­ci­nat­ed, on the way to (vac­ci­na­tion) or on the fence. Every­body is wel­comed. It’s just that we have a mi­nor re­quire­ment at this time to...those who are front­line to pro­tect all par­ties.”

Fr Chris­to said the vac­ci­na­tion re­quire­ment was for key church of­fi­cials who are in fre­quent con­tact with wor­ship­pers to help min­imise the risk of trans­mis­sion. He said this was based on ad­vice from pub­lic health of­fi­cials and is un­der con­tin­u­ous re­view by the church’s health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­ment de­part­ment.

The on­ly re­quire­ments which ap­ply to wor­ship­pers are those set out by the Min­istry of Health for re­li­gious ser­vices. That in­cludes mask-wear­ing and so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

At yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced that church ser­vices can now be con­duct­ed for 90 min­utes but must re­main at 25 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.