United Kingdom: card. Nichols, Mass for healthcare workers tonight. A celebration and applause every Thursday

(London) “We want to add a moment of prayer to that public applause”. It is with these words that card. Vincent Nichols, Catholic primate of England and Wales, announced that every Thursday night, at 7.00 pm, a bishop will celebrate Mass from one of the country’s cathedrals to show solidarity with the nurses, doctors and the other healthcare workers that were in the frontline fighting Covid-19. A “public prayer”, as it has been defined by the archbishop of Westminster, which precedes the clapping of hands from windows and doors with which, in the last four weeks, the British citizens have been saying their thank-yous to the people who have been taking care of their health with strain and courage since the beginning of the crisis. The initiative will be started tonight by card. Nichols himself, who will be officiating Mass in Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of English Catholicism, in the heart of London. Next week, it will be the turn of bishop Richard Moth, in Arundel cathedral, in southern England, and until May 28th Masses will be held from Leeds to Newcastle, Shrewsbury and Middlesbrough. In Great Britain, where churches have been closed since March 23rd, when a lockdown was imposed by the British government, watching Mass online has attracted dozens of thousands of people. The diocese of Wrexham, Wales, tripled the number of devotees, who rose to 1,295 during Palm Sunday Mass.
Valentina Bombelli