SIBU, Aug 26: Beginning this weekend, the number of parishioners allowed for mass at one time will be increased from 250 to 700 at Sacred Heart Cathedral.
These masses will be the sunset mass at 6pm on Saturday, 7.30am Mandarin mass on Sunday, 10am Iban Sunday mass and 5.30pm English Sunday mass.
Rector of the church, Bishop Joseph Hii said today that the cathedral can accommodate up to 3,000 people at a time but they are not sticking to the State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) guideline which allowed 50 per cent of the full capacity.
“We can take in 1,500 people which is 50 per cent of the full capacity of 3,000. But our committee decided to allow only 700 people because there is a lot of work to be done to comply with the SOP,” he said.
Among the SOP are temperature scanning, manual or digital registration from the use of MySejahtera app.
The church committee had to re-do the seating arrangement following the latest changes.
Bishop Hii said they are still allowing manual registration for the convenience of senior citizen who are not tech savvy.
As for St Mary’s Church and St Teresa’s Church, he said they will still maintain the 100 parishioners for each mass, though they can increase it to 50 per cent of their total capacity.
“The committee of these two churches prefer to keep to the status quo as for now,” he said.
Meanwhile St Bernard’s Church in Dalat will only open in September.
“This church does not have a working committee to prepare for the SOP and due to this, it has been closed since the Movement Control Order (MCO) was enforced on March 18 until now,” he said.—DayakDaily
