Places of worship quickly adjusting to new guidelines

At least one Saskatoon church is waiting to see how small crowds work under Phase 3 of the province’s reopening plan before following updated guidelines.

Just five days after allowing places of worship to increase crowds from 10 to 30 people, the province updated their guidelines on Thursday to allow crowd sizes of 150 people or one-third of the capacity, which ever number is smaller.

Father David Tumback at St. Patrick’s Church in Saskatoon has spent weeks carefully preparing for his first physical Sunday mass since March when the province limited gatherings at places of worship to 10 people.

His plans suddenly changed with the province’s surprise announcement.

“We were really hopeful and we were optimistic that there was going to be an increase, and we were kind of expecting that it would be incremental,” he said, expecting to see crowds of over 100 people later in the summer.

“Moving from 30 to 150 people is going to be incredible, but it has also really forced us to look at how we’re going to be able to accommodate this.”

For these events, 150 people must be cohorted into groups of 30, with the people in those groups physically distanced, and the groups separated more-so from each other.

Tumback said the challenges are wide-ranging. Mapping out entrances and exits, traffic and directions to ensure people stay distanced, sanitizing fabric pews and managing churches where there are multiple services in one day are just some of the issues he’s focused on.

“We’re grateful, but it certainly has put us into a situation where there’s a lot of details and a lot of intricate things that need to be worked out so that we can protect our people and also do justice to the worship services we have,” Tumback said.

There are currently no plans from Tumback to allow more than 30 people for Sunday’s service. He said it would be at least two weeks before St. Patrick’s alters their current plans.

The return of summer weddings

The new guidelines have also kept the phone line busy at St. Patrick’s.

Tumback said his Friday morning was filled with requests to book weddings and baptisms as parishioners are eager to get back to church.

“Going from 30 to 150 has probably put back on to the map a lot of weddings,” he said. “We’re also getting the calls coming in to say, ‘can we schedule a baptism for our baby? We’ve been waiting a number of months.'”

Tumback sees the increased crowd size as a major hurdle removed for large events at his church since few events have more than 150 people inside the building.

“We’re kind of getting back to what would be a regular situation throughout the year,” he said.

“This is a terrific step forward — to say I’m not ecstatic would be a huge lie.”