Catholics gather to protest restrictions on indoor service
‘This is the time when you really need God and the Holy Eucharist in your life,’ marcher says
As churches across the country are welcoming parishioners back inside their doors for the first time in months, Bay Area faith leaders and worshippers are growing increasingly rancorous with strict constraints public health officials continue to place on their gatherings.
Several hundred Catholics gathered Sunday morning in front of San Francisco City Hall for a “Free the Mass” demonstration and march led by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone, who asked congregants last week to join him in a public call on officials to reopen churches for worship at a “level consistent with other activities” in the city.
The Catholic marchers — many wearing matching “We are Essential” T-shirts and holding signs with messages like “We are not treated the same, nor heard the same” and “We need the holy Eucharist” — walked together nearly a mile to the Cathedral of Saint Mary for a large-scale outdoor worship service, likely one of the largest religious gatherings in the region in months.
Maria Herrara, a parishioner at St. Peter’s Church in the Mission District for 14 years, banged a tambourine to the beat of the church hymns the group sang in Spanish.
They walked in four single-file lines through the streets, guided by ropes that extended several blocks to keep them distanced by several feet.
“There’s a lot of bad news all around us — people losing jobs, losing family, getting sick and losing the schools,” Herrera said. “This is the time when you really need God and the Holy Eucharist in your life.”
The reopening rules for worship services in the Bay Area remain some of the strictest mandates for religious services in the country. In most counties, including Santa Clara and Alameda, indoor religious gathering are prohibited, but worshippers are allowed to gather outdoors without a capacity limit.
In San Francisco, up to 50 people can gather for outdoor worship and one person may go inside a religious institution at a time for individual prayer indoors.
The city plans to allow indoor services up to a maximum of 25 people by Oct. 1. But in a church like San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, that equates to less than 1% of the facility’s capacity, according to Cordileone.
Meanwhile, people are allowed to eat outdoors on restaurant patios with no set capacity limits, and indoor shopping malls are allowed to operate at 25% capacity.
Cordileone wrote an oped in The Washington Post last week, saying that government officials were denying Americans’ right to worship and that he could no longer sit silent in the face of the unjust treatment.
During his homily in front of the cathedral, the archbishop called the regulations San Francisco has placed on the churches an “insult” and a “mockery.”
“The city continues to place unrealistic and suffocating restrictions on our natural and constitutional right to worship,” Cordileone said. “This discrimination affects all of us.” He added later, “They (officials in City Hall) are mocking you, and even worse, they are mocking God.”
As state and local public health officials have instituted mandates to stem the spread of the coronavirus, the right to worship has become a fierce debate. Nationwide, several churches have sued to halt the restrictions.
Santa Clara’s North Valley Baptist Church racked up more than $100,000 in fines for holding indoor services last month in defiance of a county ban.
The church, which has about 3,000 worshippers, moved its service outside after county officials threatened to seek a court order.
Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco, said he was not opposed to more lenient capacity limits for indoor church services because the inherent risks are “not about a site but with behaviors.”
Religious gatherings, for instance, differ from malls in that people generally are seated together for lengthy durations and are singing, which can project droplets that carry the virus further distances.
But if churches put restrictions in place to minimize the risks, he said he sees minimal issues in further reopening.
“I want us to just think about the activities in churches and how we can make it safer,” Chin-Hong said. “Then some of the sites may be good enough to fulfill this really important need, which is spiritual nourishment and emotional support during COVID.”
Still, many public officials have stood by the restrictions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed back
Friday against Cordileone’s criticism of COVID-19-related restrictions, saying he should “follow science” rather than advocate for fuller in-person gatherings for Mass and worship.
Grace Vest, 39, of Pleasant Hill, called the restrictions that San Francisco has placed on religious institutions “harsh” and “overwrought.”
Vest, a former San Francisco resident, drove about 30 minutes with her husband and four children into the city Sunday morning to attend the march and support the archbishop.
“People can grumble and complain, but the archbishop decided to actually take a stand and demand that we have families that are able to worship here,” she said.
While most Bay Area churches turned to platforms like Zoom and Facebook Live to hold services for their congregants at home, many religious leaders and followers believe that if proper health recommendations are followed — such as 6 feet of space between chairs and mask requirements — are followed, they should be allowed to reopen for in-person worship.
Vest, for instance, compared watching church services on Zoom over the past six months to her children’s experience with distance learning.
“It’s just not real,” she said. “When we’re able to come together — even if we’re distanced — we’re all praying together, and it’s just something you cannot replace.”