Mass returns to Dardanup

The easing of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions has allowed a Bunbury priest to hold an intimate mass for some of his oldest parishioners.

Dardanup-Boyanup Catholic Parish priest, father Wayne Bendotti held his first Saturday night mass during the pandemic last week.

“Since we have had to stop church gatherings, my concern was always that elderly members of our parish who don’t have an online presence were missing out,” he said.

“While I am still live streaming my Sunday mass on Facebook and people are continuing to show their support, I wanted to connect with the older parishioners.”

When the numbers for social gatherings was increased from two to 10 people, Father Wayne saw an opportunity to involve the elderly.

“Myself and one of our parish musicians who has been playing the guitar during our streamed mass services thought we could use this opportunity to invite them to a mass,” he said.

“I invited eight of the older parishioners to come to a mass in the school assembly hall with myself and the parish musician and made sure we maintained our two metre distance.

“It was really nice to have people in front of me responding to the service, someone even got up and did one of the readings and it made mass a little bit more normal.”

Father Wayne said he will invite a different group of eight older parishioners to Saturday night mass each week until mass can return to normal.

“For that generation Sunday mass is their main coming together and it’s very much the heart of their faith,” he said.

“It has been a challenging time but in a positive sense it is challenging all of us to reflect on our faith a little bit more and find out what our faith really means to us.”