RCC bishop: In Ukraine the virus goes to churches but bypasses supermarkets
The Catholic bishop believes that the state and media policy in Ukraine contributes to the formation of a vision of the church as a place for the spread of coronavirus.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic, there has not been a day for the media not to talk about the people getting infected in church; at the same time there is not a single message on the number of those infected in supermarkets. The Assistant Bishop of the Lviv Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church, Eduard Kava, said about it in an interview with the "Spiritual Dignity of Lviv" resource.
The representative of the RCC noted that from the very beginning of the pandemic, declared by the World Health Organization, “there are a lot of questions to which we don’t receive answers or receive just a few. There is a lot of panic, fear and no specific explanations for such medical developments. It looks like this virus is spreading more through global media rather than by airborne transmission.”
“It seems there exist some global interests from the environments hostile to the Church,” he added. “Indeed, during the global quarantine, the life of the Church was significantly limited; so was an access to the sacraments, in particular to the Sacrament of the Eucharist <...> The spiritual immunity of the Church is being killed before our eyes.”
If the threat of the pandemic is real, the bishop noted, “why should there be 10 people in the church regardless of the size of the church building, while in hypermarkets, retail chains there are several hundred people” who “keep moving back and forth, touch goods with their hands, often not wearing protective gloves.”
“I do not want to compare the temple and the supermarket in any way but only to show that being at the liturgy can be much safer than being at the store, yet we are still subject to such restrictions. Every day the media do not fail to feature some information about infected people in whatever church. At the same time, I have not yet seen any messages on the number of infections in megastores. This position of the state contributes to the creation of the corresponding mentality and vision of the church as a place of the virus spread. Excess of such biased information will lead to the fact that even after the exit from the lockdown, a lot of people will not go to church out of fear. I’ll say a little joke in a serious way: according to many media outlets, we are dealing with a kind of 'devout' virus that works somewhat inadequately: it goes to churches but keeps away from supermarkets,” the representative of the Lviv Archdiocese of the RCC said.
As reported by the UOJ, on April 24, 2020, the Cabinet of Ministers announced a plan for a phased exit from the lockdown, which says nothing about lifting restrictions on worship.
