Archive · 2020 · From the print edition of Tuesday 14 April 2020, Vol. 28, No. 8,480
NewsEaster in an empty church
For the first time in living memory the Church of St. Janyl was closed to the faithful at Easter. The Qurbana was broadcast. In the highland parishes, the faithful came anyway.
IYIK JANYL — Archbishop Mar Ephrem celebrated the Easter Qurbana on Sunday in an empty Church of St. Janyl, with a handful of clergy, after the archeparchy closed the churches to the public because of the pandemic. The liturgy was broadcast live on IradOne and watched, the broadcaster said, in more homes than any Easter service before.
In Talas and Nurzhan, families followed the service at home, many with candles lit before the television. Some parishioners gathered outside the closed doors of the city churches at midnight and were asked by police to go home.
In the Chatkal and Toktogul basins, several parishes did not follow the archbishop's instruction. Priests there held liturgies in yurts and in the open air, saying the faithful of the mountains had kept Easter through worse. "In 1937 they closed our churches and we prayed in the yurts," said a priest in the Chatkal valley. "This year they closed them again."
A spokesman for the archeparchy said the instruction had been given "to protect the old and the sick, who are the first to come to church". He said the archbishop would "speak with his brothers in the mountains" after the emergency. Some in Talas are already calling it the Easter of the empty church.