A priest has delivered Holy Communion in full protective gear due to fears over the Covid-19 coronavirus.
Fr Victor Grech was celebrating Sunday Mass at the Church of Saint Roque in Valletta at 10am this morning.
The 62-year-old priest started the mass wearing his normal robes. After performing the standard introductory rites, Fr Grech then moved on to the Liturgy of the Word, in which all of his scriptural readings were related in some way to pestilence. In his homily, he said that God must be “seriously miffed about something or other” for him to send such an infectious virus.
When it came time to deliver the Communion Rite, Fr Grech told the congregation he would “be right back”, before disappearing into the sacristy and reemerging five minutes later wearing protective overalls, gloves and a mask.
While the priest followed official church guidelines on not putting the communion wafer directly into people’s mouths, he went a step further by getting his altar boys to spray parishioners with disinfectant as they approached to receive the sacrament.
“As a man of God, I should, in theory, be protected from whatever plague God has chosen to inflict upon this sinful world. But during the 8am mass this morning I saw a man in the front pew sneeze without covering his mouth and decided I’m not taking any chances. So I quickly drove to Levo Laboratory Services in Mrieħel and picked up anything I could,” Grech told Bis-Serjetà after the mass.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to wipe down the entire church before the next batch of germ spreaders arrives.”
Meanwhile, worshippers at St Roque said they believed prayer would see them through any potential outbreak in Malta.
“I think the best way to fight this disease is for Catholics to come together in large numbers inside enclosed spaces with little ventilation and pray to the Almighty for deliverance,” said one churchgoer.
