‘A joy to be back’: Places of worship reopen for private prayer three months after coronavirus lockdown

Queues may be smaller than for Primark but faithful in Sheffield tell Colin Drury this is moment they have been waiting for

Canon Keith Farrow, vice-dean of Sheffield Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Paul (Sheffield Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Paul)

For those whose religion is not retail, shops were not the only thing allowed to reopen on Monday.

As thousands of people lined up to be allowed in high street stores, one may have been forgiven for not noticing that, to somewhat less fanfare, places of worship were also throwing wide their doors for the first time since the coronavirus lockdown started.

Certainly, one may have been forgiven for not noticing in Sheffield.

Here, the queue for the city’s Primark stretched down the road and round the block. The queue for the nearby Cathedral Church of St Marie – the region’s main Catholic centre – topped out at just half a dozen.

“This is the world we live in,” said Bob Rae, one of those six. “People find their joy in different ways.”

Even that dwarfed the numbers waiting at the Anglican Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Paul. Just three worshippers were sat on steps there when doors were released for the first time since March.

“Really?” pondered Bob, a retired journalist. “Maybe Catholics are a bit more fearful?”

Whatever the case, the relatively low-key openings of such places of worships perhaps belied the sheer significance of this new easing of restrictions to millions of the country’s faithful.

“We’re over the moon,” said dean Father Chris Posluszny. “I think when we closed no one anticipated it would be so long. It’s been necessary but there have been so many people missing coming here.”

In the interim, he has been running an online mass every Sunday. “Just me and a video camera in an empty cathedral,” he said. “It’s gone well – I had a letter from someone watching in Australia – but a cathedral needs people.”

For now, it should be said, the rules around reopening buildings of faith remain ultra-limited.

People are allowed to attend for private prayer only. No congregations, such as mass, or ceremonies such as weddings, are permitted. The overwhelming majority of mosques and Hindu temples – where the main purpose of the building is to facilitate group worship – have decided to not yet open at all as a result.

“Individual prayers can be performed anywhere, primarily at homes,” said Imam Asim, chairman of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board. “Accordingly, opening the mosques [on Monday] will cause more challenges as the expectation from the community will be to resume collective worship.”

Father Christopher Posluszny, dean of Sheffield Cathedral Church of Saint Marie (Sheffield Cathedral Church of Saint Marie)

In Sheffield, every single mosque currently remains shut. So does the city’s Hindu Mandir.

“We may open for individual prayer at some point,” said Waheed Akhtar, adviser to the trustees at the city’s Madina Masjid. “But the overriding concern is the safety of those who come here. We have a lot of elderly people, people with health conditions, Bame people obviously – all disproportionately affected by Covid-19, so we are taking time to make sure we have everything in accordance with the guidelines.”

That be as it may, among those who could access their place of worship in the South Yorkshire city on Monday – including those two cathedrals and the city’s Shri Guru Gobind Singh Ji Sikh Temple – the joy appeared almost palpable.

“Perhaps you can be guilty of taking a place like this for granted because you assume it will always be there,” said Margaret Nalty, a retired nurse outside the Anglican cathedral. “So to have it snatched away without any warning was shocking.”

There’s a paradox, she describes, which appears felt by people of all faiths who The Independent speaks to.

On the one hand, the last three months have proven that they don’t need a building to be a community; that it is the people they have kept seeing during online congregations or chatted to in Whatsapp faith groups that are the real bricks and mortar of their religion. On the other, they have never felt the importance of their respective places of workshop more acutely.

“It feels good to be back, put it that way,” said Ms Nalty’s friend Susan Daines, a retired teacher. “It’s hard to explain. It’s faith so you can’t articulate it. Not how you’d like. But being back here, it intensifies the significance of the experience.”

As they headed in, one at a time, there was a strange pause when each greeted church officials they may otherwise have hugged after such a long absence. “I don’t know how to greet you,” Ms Daines laughed. It is a feeling we’re perhaps all getting used to across all walks of life.

Inside, pews had been removed to ensure social distancing and hand sanitiser stations were everywhere. Once a set number of people arrive – probably around 30 or 40 – it will be one in, one out.

“We’ve got a lovely space here,” said vice-dean Canon Keith Farrow. “The challenge was – for all places of worship – to ensure people feel like they are coming into a safe space but also a holy space. I think we’ve done that.”

The importance of reopening cannot be underestimated, he said: “We’ve been here on this site for almost 1,000 years and very rarely have the doors been closed. We’ve gone through revolutions, through the reformation, through the blitz, and the doors stayed open. Even in the plague I don’t think they closed. So this has been a burden for all of us. But one that now becomes a joy to be back open again...Hopefully, the first step towards to normality again.”

It is something, back at the Catholic cathedral, Bob Rae hopes too. As it happens, he is one of the bell ringers there. When he took hold of the ropes on Monday morning to mark the reopening, he noticed the calluses on his finger tips – hardened from years of holding the rope – had gone soft over the last three months.

“It was actually quite painful after all this time,” he said. “But worth it. How wonderful to hear them again.”