A bishop in the southern Italian region of Campania is making waves for his recent decision to ban priests, religious, and lay people who have not been vaccinated from distributing communion at Mass in a bid to curb Italy’s rising infection rate.
Bishop Giacomo Cirulli, who leads the Dioceses of Teano-Calvi and Alife-Caiazzo, in the Italian region of Campania, which has had 11,815 new COVID cases and five new COVID-related deaths in past 24 hours, issued a decree announcing the ban earlier this week.
In the Jan. 8 decree, Cirulli said the status of the pandemic “is constantly and seriously worsening,” and invited the faithful under his pastoral direction to “respect and strictly enforce prophylaxis and the sanitation norms for the containment of the pandemic within our churches and in the relevant premises.”
Specifically, he urged faithful to obey the rules of a May 7, 2020, Memorandum of Under-standing between the Italian government and CEI on the resumption of liturgical celebrations, which bans the use of holy water and the reception of communion on the tongue, requires Mass attendees to maintain at least three feet of distance, use hand sanitizer, and to wear face masks.
Cirulli asked Mass-goers to “to strictly respect the distance and therefore the number of admissions into the liturgical hall” in the days and weeks to come.