Status: 20.01.2021 6:33 p.m.
With the extension of the lockdown and the tightening of the corona measures, religious communities will also face new rules. Believers now have to wear OP or FFP2 masks.
Church services and other religious celebrations with more than ten participants must therefore be reported to the responsible public order office at least two working days in advance. This applies if no general agreements have been made with the authorities in advance. “We always have problems with larger outbreaks in parts of the country in connection with religious meetings of smaller religious communities. And they can then have a greater effect,” said Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) on Wednesday at the state press conference in Hanover Federal-State resolutions. “At this point, we want to ensure that the rules are adhered to as much as possible – more so than has been the case in the past.”
Large communities are usually exemplary
Praise for hygiene measures and compliance with them at meetings went to the congregations and faith centers of the major religious communities. “All of them have made voluntary commitments which, to our knowledge, almost without exception actually comply and which are also accepted as a standard by the local authorities. We have no problems with that,” said Weil. But sometimes someone falls out of the ordinary here too. At the beginning of the year, a prayer hour led by a Catholic chaplain in Papenburg, Emsland, was noticed. 15 participants sat together “close together and without a mouth and nose covering”, according to a police report.
No attendance at an incidence of 200+?
The Evangelical Reformed Church in Leer recommended on Wednesday that attendance services should be dispensed with at an incidence of 200 or more. It is said that this is basically a decision by the communities themselves. No district in the north-west currently has such a high incidence, the closest is Wittmund with 145. Church President Martin Heimbucher underlined the pastoral importance of church services in this context.
Further information
