Religious organizations continue to innovate amid COVID-19 pandemic

As the world settles into a new normal, religious institutions in Saskatoon are finding ways to bring people together and practise their faith while maintaining distance. Saskatoon Morning's Heather Morrison spoke with a Catholic priest, a rabbi, a minister and an imam on how they are coping. 

On the menu: Confession

Father Darryl Millette with Holy Spirit Parish has created a website where he has compiled live streams of masses from the diocese around Saskatoon and added a playlist of homilies from around the city too. 

Another creative thing Millette did was set up a parking lot confession station. Confessions have to be in person. Millette set up some cones in the church parking lot where he would stand and more cones for where the people would stand. They were at least 10 to 12 feet away from each other and the lineup was mapped out via cones further back in the parking lot so no one could overhear confessions. 

"It was all done in person, outside, with the cones set up for physical distancing purposes," Millette said. 

"It worked out fairly well."

Passover via Zoom 

Just like Millette with the need for confessions to be in person, other faith leaders were coming up against obstacles in their traditional models.

According to Jewish law, you need 10 people under the same roof to do the most important parts of a service, including the reading of the Torah. Yet, the Jewish community has found a way to go ahead via online services, like most other faith organizations.

"All these restrictions in the past, they were pushing people to be together, to create community," Rabbi Claudio Jodorkovsky said. 

"Now we cannot do that because it's for our health ... and now online, we all read together."

Passover is also coming up on April 9. Usually, people would gather together for Passover Seder, a special celebration with symbolic foods.

But this year people will make their own Seder plates and video chat each other on Zoom. Jodorkovsky said he plans to connect with some of his family in Chile for the celebration as well. 

Mini congregations

Imam Ilyas Sidyot from the Islamic Centre ran into a bit of a snag for his online preparations. He is able to do an Arabic sermon and the call to the prayer — which is a signal to members that it is time to pray. But Sidyot said people cannot follow an imam in prayer in their home. They can listen to the sermon and the call to the prayer, but then someone in the home has to lead the prayer. 

"They can have their own little congregation in the home," Sidyot said. 

"I have received many, many messages from the community members that they were very happy and they did appreciate that we reached out to them and we kept them together."

Virtual coffee meetups

Minister Karen Fraser Gitlitz from the Unitarian Centre is making a point of reaching out to the members of her church and focusing on the times when they can (virtually) be together on Sundays. She said they'll have reached out to every member of their church by this Sunday. 

"[We want to] see, what is it like for them and what are they dealing with to make sure that we're meeting people's needs and connecting with them and letting them know that we have people who volunteer to get groceries and stuff like that," she said. 

After their online Sunday services, the group breaks off into smaller groups via video to mingle together. People told Gitlitz they were connecting with people they never had before because of these groups. 

The Unitarian Centre is also offering phone tutoring for people who want to participate in the service but are less comfortable with technology to show them how these online platforms work.