Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday she had a “very pleasant” conversation with the pastor of an Albany Park church that defied the statewide stay-at-home order and hopes to educate him into compliance, avoiding mass arrests.
“We’re not gonna send in the police to arrest parishioners. People are exercising their faith, and I understand that,” the mayor said.
“But it’s a mistake to gather in large congregate settings — particularly if you have an underlying medical condition [or] you are otherwise in a vulnerable population. That’s hopefully the dialogue that we’ll be able to have with the pastor.”
Lightfoot has not hesitated to play the heavy during the pandemic.
She shut down the lakefront, the Riverwalk and the 606 Trail when Chicagoans could not be trusted to avoid gathering in large groups and drove around the city breaking up those gatherings. She cut off citywide liquor sales at 9 p.m.
Why, then, wasn’t the service at the Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church shut down?
“Our plan has always been to educate people into compliance. If we can do that, we will do that. We don’t want to take more aggressive measures unless we’re forced to do that because people are defying it,” the mayor said.
“But we’re not gonna have a circumstance where people are blatantly ignoring the rules that have been put in place to help save peoples’ lives.”
The mayor said she had a “very pleasant conversation” with Cristian Ionescu, Elim Romanian’s senior pastor, on Monday and hopes to have a follow-up conversation soon.
Last week, Elim Romanian and Logos Baptist ministries in Niles asked for a temporary restraining order preventing them from facing criminal repercussions for hosting services while vowing to impose strict social distancing measures.
Speaking in his native Romanian, Cristian Ionescu, Elim Romanian’s senior pastor, told his flock the move to hold services is “not a rebellion for the sake of rebellion” and claimed the Constitution grants them the right to worship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We feel that we are discriminated against,” Ionescu told the Chicago Sun-Times, noting large groups of people are allowed to shop at grocery and hardware stores. “We follow the same rules as other places that are also considered essential, and yet we cannot have more than 10 people in a service, which is ridiculous.”
On Sunday, Elim Romanian took considerable steps to adhere to the state’s social distancing and public safety guidelines: Masks, gloves and hand sanitizer were made available, temperature checks were conducted at the door, and capacity was limited to 120 worshippers, though the church’s main auditorium and overflow rooms can hold 1,300.
Roughly 70 people were in attendance, including the church leadership, band and choir.
The vast majority of congregants didn’t wear masks during the service. But almost everyone put one on before leaving. And when the service was winding down, Ionescu sternly directed his followers to stay 6 feet apart and warned against congregating outside.
“Why is this important? We are being watched,” he said. “We are being recorded.”
Contributing: Tom Schuba
