Church raided by police due to busy service in lockdown Wales

POLICE were called to break up a church service as they are not allowed under Wales’ firebreaker lockdown.

New Hope Community Church in Llanrumney, Cardiff, posted a video to its Facebook page showing officers entering the building to stop the service.

‘It’s a strange season,’ the video caption said. ‘If someone would have said a year ago that gathering to worship your God and praying together would be interrupted and disbanded by the police, no one should have believed it. But here we are. 2020. Wales. UK. It is an illegal thing to gather. To sing. See for yourselves.’

A person recording the video, who is wearing a mask alongside everyone inside the church, is heard saying: ‘We are at church right now and the police just showed up. ‘They have knocked on all the windows and the doors, they shined flashlights, so please pray for us right now. ‘I’m just letting you know this is happening. This is in Cardiff. We are not even in a third world country right now, this is in Cardiff.’

A South Wales Police officer in the video tells the congregation they have received phone calls from members of the public who are concerned about a gathering inside the church.

He says they are breaking lockdown regulations, asks them to leave the church and to wait for the 17 days to ‘blow over’.

After a discussion with the police officers, the congregation agrees to leave the church. One person, who appears to be the church pastor, addresses the police officers in the video: ‘This is really strange and, I say it respectfully, we love you guys as police officers and we are not law-breaking people. ‘But when they say to us that it is illegal to come and worship our God, this is the West, this isn’t a nation somewhere far off somewhere else.’ The pastor elaborates on the rules and explains how it is illegal to sing, claiming the Christian faith is ‘the only religion that sings’.

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