A Donegal priest has called on people to stop attending wakes, funerals and burials as the Covid-19 guidance is “not sinking in”.
Tremendous comfort
Fr John Joe Duffy CC of Dunfanaghy/Creeslough parish said that although going to wakes, funeral Masses and burials is a “tremendous comfort”, it is dangerous.
“Despite public health pleas, the message is not sinking in and it is not getting through that it is dangerous to gather in large numbers and to gather close together,” Fr Duffy said. He also warned of the new Covid-19 variant first identified in Britian which “is many times more infectious than anything we have seen, so we need to be much more careful for the safety of others and ourselves”.
“I am urging people to take care to avoid what we are so accustomed to for the next few months and avoid congregating and gathering in large numbers outside churches and in cemeteries/graveyards and leave those spaces for families who cannot enter the Church,” he added, saying it “is much safer at this time to send a card, make a phone call, send a message, add your condolences to the death notices on RIP.ie”.