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Friday, March 29, 2024

Tacloban holds first drive-in Mass service

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Tacloban City—The St. Josemaria Escriva Mission Station opened its first "drive-in" Mass on Sept. 13 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tacloban holds first drive-in Mass service
DRIVE-IN MASS. The faithful sit in their cars as a priest celebrates Mass at the St. Josemaria Escriva Mission Station in Tacloban City on Sunday, the first 'drive-in' worship service held amid the coronavirus disease pandemic. Ronald Reyes

"I was thinking about this for so long,” said Fr. Kim Margallo of the mission station in Apitong village, Tacloban City.

“Now is the right time since people are afraid to go to mass for fear of close contact, yet they are hungry for the Eucharist."

During the mass, the churchgoers parked their cars with no physical contacts as they could only stay inside their vehicles.

“There is no need for QR code and other prerequisites since they don’t go out of their cars,” Margallo said.

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“Only during communion will they be able to roll down their windows, and Eucharistic ministers will go around to distribute communion with masks and face shields.”

During the church’s first opening on Sunday night, some 25 cars with family members inside came and attended the mass.

Those who did not have vehicles stayed inside the church and underwent the usual protocols.

With the quarantine being enforced in the city and elsewhere in the Archdiocese of Palo, Margallo says, the church has to come up with a creative way to continue its evangelization “to serve the people of God in the best place possible.

“People are clamoring for the physical attendance to the mass. That’s why I thought of adopting an outdoor mass, especially now that the coronavirus infections are increasing in our place,” Margallo told the Catholic news site Licas.news.

He says attending the mass, the highest form of prayer, is an experience that requires a full and active presence.

“The proper way to celebrate the mass is to be physically present and not to do it online,” Margallo said.

After receiving good feedback from the parishioners, Margallo said, they would be improving the arrangement of vehicles in the parking area so that more churchgoers would be accommodated.

The parking space occupies about a fourth of the open-hectare mission station.

“If more people will come, then we’ll open another mass schedule in the evening,” said Margallo who also launched an online mass for the Catholics who stay home due to the pandemic.

Fr. Chris Arthur Militante, the spokesman of the Palo Archdiocese, says the opening of drive-in masses in the entire archdiocese will depend on the archbishop and the set-up in the parishes.

“Not all have large parking spaces,” Militante said.

The Palo Archdiocese has 86 parishes and mission stations, with seven vicariates divided into two districts.

Meanwhile, Margallo urged other religions and denominations to also adopt the drive-in mass “to keep their people guided and in communion with their rituals and practices to nourish them spiritually.”

He says the pandemic has already created many boundaries in the respective faith and religions of the public.

“If the physical and psychological capacity of man is tested and challenged, we need spiritual nourishment,” Margallo said.

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