Posted on 04/16/2003 4:11:28 AM PDT by Loyalist
SARS curtails Easter rites for Catholics Toronto parishes suspend communion from the cup, kissing crucifix and shaking hands for peace. At least one Ottawa church takes similar measures
Tom Blackwell, with files from Katie Martin CanWest News Service
TORONTO -- With the SARS outbreak, many Catholics going to church during Holy Week won't be sharing wine at communion or shaking hands during mass to limit any chance of infection.
The emergence of SARS in a close-knit prayer group forced Catholic leaders in Toronto to suspend many of the church's practices for Easter, the holiest of days in the church's calendar.
Catholics taking communion will not be given sacramental wine from a shared chalice, and communion wafers will be placed in the parishioner's hand, not on their tongue.
Worshippers will be asked to bow to each other rather than shake hands during the "salutation of peace," and to bow or cross themselves before the crucifix on Good Friday, instead of kissing it. Restrictions on communal traditions within other religious gatherings were also being considered, said Colin D'Cunha, Ontario's medical officer of health.
Bishop John Boissonneau, spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese of Toronto, urged parishioners displaying SARS-like symptoms to stay home, even if it means missing Easter masses.
"Some people may feel a certain tension or stress between their religious duties and their public-health duties," he said. "Let me tell you: their public-health duty is their religious duty, their responsibility before their God to safeguard their community."
The Health Ministry is working with other churches to implement similar restrictions, said Dr. Colin
D'Cunha, the province's commissioner of public health.
In Ottawa, Father André Samson at St. Margaret Mary Parish on Fairburn Avenue said the parish made the decision to stop serving wine during communion last Sunday.
He explained the Catholic church is given the choice to either serve bread and wine, or just bread during communion. "Since the parish is so small, we have always served both," he said.
However, due to the large numbers of people sharing wine at communion, the decision was made to serve only bread. "We have 100 to 200 people drinking from the same four cups of wine on Sundays," he said.
However, Eucharistic Minister Charles Gunning of the Holy Cross Church on Walkley Road said this Sunday's Easter service would continue as usual with wine and bread.
The restrictions followed a new cluster of cases centred around a charismatic Catholic prayer group, nearly 30 of whom are probable or suspect SARS patients. Members who may have been unknowingly infected went to work and elsewhere in the community.
Public health authorities also urged millions of Toronto-area residents yesterday to stay home if they have any symptom of the disease -- from high fever to a dry cough or bad headache.
The warnings were the strongest health officials have directed at the general public since the outbreak began a month ago. Most previous advisories had been aimed at people exposed to known sources of the ailment.
Dr. Young said people who think they might have Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome should stay off public transit, even to visit a doctor.
And hospital workers must now consider anyone who arrives with respiratory symptoms as a potential sufferer of the illness until proven otherwise. Patients should not be ruled out as SARS cases just because they had no obvious link with one of two hospitals where infection was allowed to spread for a number of days, said Dr. Young.
Nevertheless, he insisted the disease has still not spun out of control and that the latest cluster of cases is being contained.
He pointed to the fact that the number of probable and suspect cases rose by just eight yesterday, bringing the Ontario total to 244, which suggests the outbreak within the religious group was slowing down.
Dr. Young compared the situation to a mushroom. The early cases were low on the stalk of the mushroom and easily traced back to the original patients and the hospital that treated them. Now the cases have spread out into the head of the mushroom, with their source less obvious, he said.
But Dr. Sheela Basrur, Toronto's medical officer of health, later dismissed the analogy, saying that it is too close to "mushroom cloud" and could unduly alarm people.
Dr. Basrur's office has directed more than 500 members of Bukas Loob Sa Diyos into quarantine after 29 members of the largely Filipino-Canadian Catholic prayer group were diagnosed as suspect or probable SARS cases.
She said yesterday that misdiagnosis by local health-care facilities may have allowed the illness to spread among the community -- and perhaps wider.
The cluster traces back to an elderly man who was taken to Scarborough Grace Hospital, where the first SARS cases were treated, on March 16, the last day before the facility was effectively closed. He was near two other patients who had the disease and have died.
Because they had visited the hospital, family members were all forced into quarantine for 10 days. After the period was over, one of the sons had symptoms and sought help. But three different facilities turned him away, saying he could not have SARS if he had already finished the quarantine.
It now appears they were wrong, and it is likely that he had started getting sick before the end of the 10 days, said Dr. Basrur.
Meanwhile, members of the family attended a large retreat and a mass with the Bukas Loob group and went to work, she said. They were also at the funeral of the father, who officials now believe died from SARS.
The group, also known as BLD, has suspended all its meetings and special events for the time being, said a message on the organization's Web site.
Meanwhile, Dr. Basrur confirmed that a Canadian woman who died in the Philippines this week from what doctors there consider to be SARS was a nurse in the Toronto area. She would not say where the woman worked, but insisted the nurse did not have symptoms while she was on duty. Officials say the disease is transmitted while people are symptomatic.
© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen
I'm being nitpicky here, but it bugs me about the bowing. Bow to each other, bow to the altar, bow to the tabernacle.
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