For the last two months, if one wanted to attend the Sunday 9:30am Mass in Ste Rose du Lac one needed first to receive an invitation. Since the introduction of the Phase 4 Guidelines by the Province of Manitoba last week, invitations are no longer required.
The Phase 4 guidelines allow faith-based gatherings of up to 30% of room capacity; since Ste Rose Church has seating for at least 350 persons, this allows us to presently host congregations of up to 105. That is a larger number of persons than came to a typical Sunday liturgy in pre-Covid times. Thus unless we see an unanticipated increase in demand for the Sunday liturgy, for the time being anyone who wants to come to Sunday Mass is free to come.
If you prefer a Lord’s Day Mass with less people present, consider attending either the Saturday 5:00 Mass in Ste Rose or the Saturday 7:30 Mass in Laurier. Attendance at those two liturgies is typically under 30 persons.
Now that the Province of Manitoba is allowing 50 persons to assemble indoors, it no longer seems necessary for me to send out invitations to persons assigned to the Saturday 5pm mass—in pre-COVID times we never had nearly that many come Saturday nights. Feel free to come every week.
Sunday morning 9:30am Mass will still be by invitation. Let’s pray that the Province raises the cap to 80.
I would discourage jumping between Masses; if you have signed up for Saturday night, come Saturday nights, and if you have signed up for Sunday morning, come Sunday mornings. Otherwise our ability to keep track of congregation size will become overly complicated. Thanks!
The Archdiocese of Winnipeg issued yesterday evening new protocols for the celebration of public Masses. They are effective “immediately”, though also only once each parish is able to comply. I aim therefore to resume public Masses in Ste Rose Tuesday June 2nd.
The protocols around social-distancing and sanitization are fairly strict, and numbers are limited at present to 25. It will take some time to come up with an implementation strategy. So, more details next week.
If you wish to read the new protocols, they are available here.