A day before President Duterte was expected to decide on the quarantine measures to be imposed or reimposed on different areas in the country, Manila apostolic administrator Bishop Broderick Pabillo on Sunday urged the government anew to reconsider holy Mass and other religious activities as essential services, stressing that online Masses are not enough.
“We clamor to the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases) to consider religious services as essential services and not just consider us in the category of entertainment, among movies and beauty salons,” said Pabillo during his homily for the live-streamed Corpus Christi Sunday Mass.
The Solemnity of Corpus Christi is a feast commemorating the institution by Jesus Christ of the Holy Eucharist to His apostles during the Last Supper.
“We have to speak up because the Eucharist, the Mass, is important, and we fight for what is important. If they don’t see it as important, then they should respect our belief that for us it is important,” he told the faithful.
Pabillo said that while online Masses help people spiritually, as these allow them to pray and hear the word of God, they were still not the same as physically attending the Mass in church and receiving the holy communion.
“The Eucharist is so important for us and we have been deprived of this for the past three months, exactly 90 days today,” he said.
“We need it, the Eucharist sustains us in our journey. This is essential for us. We will get life, real life through Jesus which we receive in holy communion. We receive his real body and blood. This is the firm belief of the Church,” Pabillo added.
According to the prelate, the Catholic Church and the faithful make do with the temporary arrangement of online Masses “because of the extraordinary situation we are in.”
“Our celebration with God and our relationship with him is something that is real, actual and cannot be reduced to virtual,” he said.
“We all long to go back to participate in the Mass in the church. Virtual is not enough, we want the real thing,” Pabillo explained.
The bishop has repeatedly made an appeal to the government to allow religious gatherings, including Masses, to resume, saying they have the necessary safeguards and protocols in place.
“It is not fair for them to limit our attendance in the GCQ (general community quarantine) to only 10 persons irrespective of the sizes of the churches. Where is the scientific basis for limiting us to 10 persons only?” Pabillo said.
Earlier, the IATF decided to keep the prohibition on mass gatherings for religious activities even after it met with religious leaders.
According to the task force’s guidelines on religious gatherings, the maximum number of Mass participants is 10 in areas under GCQ.