While Emmanuel Macron could announce a national reconfinement this Wednesday, October 28 during a televised speech at 8 p.m., the president of the Conference of Bishops of France, Bishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, sent a letter to the chief the night before. state, reports the weekly Christian Family.
In this letter, the president of the French episcopate makes three requests to the President of the Republic: to allow the French to go to the cemetery for All Saints' Day on November 1 and on the day of the dead on November 2, to maintain the practice of worship and lastly, guarantee the proper functioning of public chaplaincies.
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“Let people go to the cemetery. Because it is very important for everyone, believers and non-believers ”
, explains to the
Christian Family
Vincent Neymon, assistant secretary general of the CEF
.
"With the way the deaths have gone this year ... it is very important that this gesture of memory, and of faith for some, can be made".
During the first confinement in the spring, worship had been prohibited.
However, an ordinance of the Council of State of May 18 had contradicted this provision and summoned the Prime Minister to take "
measures strictly proportionate to the health risks incurred"
, authorizing de facto again the cults.
In the event of reconfinement, the president of the CEF wishes "
that for all believers - for Catholics obviously, but also for others - the need and the need to live worship be taken into account"
, indicates Vincent Neymon who emphasizes the
"discipline"
demonstrated by the Catholic faithful during the deconfinement with regard to the respect of barrier gestures and the wearing of masks at mass.
Finally, the third request in the letter sent to the Élysée concerns chaplaincies, and in particular those present in prisons, hospitals and nursing homes, reporting difficulties at this level during the first confinement.