The priest in a parish in the Nottingham diocese where people were asked not to attend Mass over Christmas if they were not vaccinated has defended the move.
Fr Joe Wheat of the Holy Family parish in east Nottingham said it was carrying out a risk assessment that led the parish to take a “clear and robust approach” in the lead up to Christmas.
He said the request for people who were not vaccinated and were not prepared to wear a mask not to attend church was made because of several factors.
Nottingham has a high rate of non-vaccination and the parish’s own primary schools had experienced a significant rise in positive cases, he explained, so classes had to be segregated in the run-up to Christmas and all but one nativity and carol services were cancelled.
Hospitals were beginning to show signs of being overwhelmed and several local care homes had gone back to refusing to allow visitors.
One of the three churches in the parish is designed in such a way that cross-ventilation is not possible, and in another of the churches it is very poor and ineffective, Fr Wheat added. “Two of our church communities in the parish are very diverse and we know that the particular ethnic groups present have a very low take-up of vaccinations.”
The parish was also experiencing some non-compliance with masks wearing. “We were very concerned about the numbers of people that might attend Christmas Masses in our, relatively, small churches. One of our churches has also experienced a high level of deaths from Covid which has left us reeling somewhat,” he said.
Throughout the past two years of the pandemic, parish priests nationwide have been asked to carry out ongoing assessments of the risk in their particular context.
Government and bishops’ conference guidance is necessarily quite general and unless something is stipulated as law, each parish has had to respond to their local situation differently.
“I am confident that our pastoral leadership team properly considered all these factors and more before coming to the decision to be more robust in our advice,” Fr Wheat said.
The parish had said in its newsletter: “If you are not vaccinated and/or won’t wear a mask, please do not come to Mass.” The parish offered free masks to churchgoers and at no point checked the vaccination status of people attending Mass.
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