Mayor Bill de Blasio looking forward to attending Faith Services and calls Church Leaders Unsung Heroes
Update – June 28
St. Patrick’s Cathedral has announced that Mass will in fact be taking place as of today, June 28. I imagine other churches to be following suit. One needs to check with their local parish/church to see about openings and masses. The following comes to us from the site of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“”Starting Sunday, June 28th, St. Patrick’s Cathedral will re-open for Mass. For those looking to attend Mass in person, we will begin to have a small number of Masses throughout the week at 25% capacity. Listed below will be the Mass times for in person Masses for the time being. Those entering the Cathedral must follow strict COVID-19 CDC guidelines. Thank you for your understanding and patience! God bless. “”
Original Story:
Recently the Archdiocese of Brooklyn announced that mass at its parishes in Brooklyn and Queens could begin on June 29, 2020; of course, at limited capacity. With that in mind I asked Mayor de Blasio on Friday, June 26, if he would be attending a mass in the near future.
“I really want to thank Cardinal Dolan and Bishop DiMarzio and all the religious leaders of this city who made clear to their congregants, how important it was to hold back from services during the worst of this crisis. The religious leaders, the faith leaders of this city have actually been heroes and unsung heroes in too many cases, helping to make some of the toughest decisions, but all about the health and safety of their congregants and they did the right thing,” said the Mayor. “And I’m glad that they’re finally getting a chance to bring people back, but as you said, the right way with capacity. I’ll absolutely be going out. As time allows, I look forward to returning to faith services and joining with people, but the important thing is we all have to do it, the safe and smart way.”
Over the past two weekends, the Mayor had participated in a number of faith-based events.
June 13
- SDA CHURCH’S ATLANTIC YOUTH MINISTRIES FACEBOOK LIVE EVENT
- NEW HOPE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP’S ZOOM VIRTUAL WORSHIP SERVICE
June 14
- EXODUS TRANSITIONAL COMMUNITY’S EAST HARLEM PRAY AND PROTEST
June 21
- BROWN MEMORIAL BAPTIST CHURCH
- MOTT HAVEN REFORMED CHURCH
Although the Archdiocese of New York has yet to announce, with clarity, when and at which specific church in the NYC Metropolitan area would reopen and to what extent, there is the following press conference held on May 21 featuring Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Discussed were the preparation that were underway for the reopening of their 288 parishes through their ‘Faith Forward’ initiative.
Below is a partial transcript followed by the actual video.
“It should be noted that we recognize that not every parish of the Archdiocese will open at the same time. The situation that we experience here in the city will be very different from our parishes in Sullivan, and Ulster and Duchess County. That is going to necessitate an opportunity for us to open parishes who worship in a gradual way. Different in the rural areas of the Diocese and much, much different in the metropolitan area. One thing that will be constant is that every one of our priests, on a weekly basis, will begin to be tested for the Coronavirus. That’s an important thing, a great reassurance for the people. So this gradual process of reopening then will fold out first with unlocking all of our church doors. Some parishes had the doors of their church locked for these 10 weeks. So the churches will be open for private prayer and confession and then there’ll be a limited celebration of baptisms and marriages – and then, maybe a week or so of the distribution of Holy Communion during weekdays without the celebration of mass. To give us an opportunity to test out how that might work – and then, limited weekday mass and funeral masses. Observing social distance and the limitation of people in the churches – and finally, Sunday Mass with supervised attendance, which is the ultimate goal. So these steps will be implemented region by region and parish by parish. They’ll be adapted to meet the particular circumstances of each parish. “