Dear Friends,

From next Sunday (12th July) we will take our first tentative steps toward celebrating Mass publicly again, this will be a “soft-reintroduction,” taking small steps at a time, not a “back to normal” approach. Because of the ongoing nature of the pandemic the bishops have reaffirmed that we are still not obliged to attend Sunday Mass during this period, so although many will want to, others should not feel pressured to do so until the time is right.

The guidance from the government and our bishops is very stringent, there are sanitising precautions in place when entering the church. A rearrangement and reduction in the number of chairs in order to achieve adequate social distancing. Careful care in the cleaning of the church both before and after Mass. Changes in the way that we celebrate Mass in order to minimise the amount of movement, and the need to give our name and a contact telephone number in case our details are required for “Track and Trace” purposes.

Many parishes across the Diocese are not able to put sufficient safety procedures in place yet and so won’t be celebrating Mass publicly for the time being.
However, across our own cluster of parishes I think we have sufficient resources to prepare and adequately steward a small number of Masses in a couple of our churches. As an initial step, we will celebrate four rather than our regular twelve Sunday Masses, in four rather than all of our eight churches all at the same, rather than a variety of times. See below for the precise details.
As general principles I would like to suggest the following for you to consider: