Since mid March our lives have changed drastically \u2013 Pandemic \/ Social Distancing \/ Quarantining. Changes have also come to St. Monica\u2019s Parish, with the Church being closed mid-March.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week the Provincial Government announced that Churches and other venues could open by this Friday.\u00a0 However, COVID is still around even if we have not been directly affected in Wawa.\u00a0 The disease is easily transmitted so social distancing and hand washing are the norm today.<\/p>\n
Churches in the Diocese have been granted permission to open their doors on the June 20 \u2013 21 weekend. An Ad Hoc Committee within the Ontario Catholic Churches have prepared a 52-page Guideline.\u00a0 All churches must have a prepared plan and equipment to meet the guidelines.\u00a0 Locally, procedures are being developed and hopefully the church will be open to parishioners by the June 20th<\/sup> weekend.<\/p>\n Some key rules include the use of hand sanitizers, wearing of masks, maximum attendees equal to 30% of rated capacity with social distancing rules being followed. There are other guidelines that will be enforced to safeguard parishioners and the community. The local safeguards will be made public to parishioners before the reopening.<\/p>\n On a second front, The Reverend Marcel Damphousse, Bishop of the Diocese has been transferred to Ottawa as the Coadjutor Archbishop of Ottawa-Cornwall, effective June 16, 2020. We all wish the Bishop all of the best in his new role and thank him for his service and support to Wawa and the parishes within the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie.<\/p>\n Father Michael Asorgoe, Priest Parish of St. Monica<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since mid March our lives have changed drastically \u2013 Pandemic \/ Social Distancing \/ Quarantining. Changes have also come to St. Monica\u2019s Parish, with the Church being closed mid-March. Earlier this week the Provincial Government announced that Churches and other venues could open by this Friday.\u00a0 However, COVID is still around even if we have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1944],"class_list":["post-32732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-st-monicas-parish"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 03:34:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32733,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32732\/revisions\/32733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}