Italy opens churches as virus rules dictate how to eat, pray

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Italy and the Vatican opened a new phase in the virus crisis Monday, with churches resuming public Masses after a sharp confrontation between the Italian church and state over limits on worshipping in the era of COVID-19.

Guards in hazmat suits took the temperature of the faithful entering St. Peter’s Basilica, where Pope Francis celebrated an early morning Mass for a handful of people in a side chapel to commemorate the centenary of the birth of St. John Paul II.

Across town, the Rev. Jose Maria Galvan snapped on a latex glove and face mask before distributing Communion to the dozen parishioners attending the 7:20 a.m. Mass at his Sant’Eugenio parish.

“Before I became a priest I was a surgeon, so for me gloves are normal,” he joked afterward. “I’m dexterous (with gloves) so the hosts don’t get away from me.”

It was all part of Italy’s next step in emerging from the West’s first coronavirus lockdown, with commercial shops and restaurants reopening and barbers going back to work for the first time since March 10.

But with several hundred new infections being recorded every day, the reopening is hardly a free-for-all, with strict virus-containing measures regulating everything from how you get your coffee to the way you pray.

The government has published 120 pages of detailed norms for the resumption of work, play, worship and commerce, with some of the most intricate protocols reserved for the resumption of public religious observance in the Roman Catholic country.

Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Orthodox and Siks have their own protocols, with at the very least masks required for the faithful and a one-meter distance kept at all times. The fear is that the elderly, among the most devout and also the most at-risk of...