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No CCTV for Church Prayer
CCTV must be switched off during services as prayer should be private, the Church of England court has ruled.
18:36 26 February 2018
A Church of England court has ruled that CCTV cameras installed in churches must be switched off during services, saying that prayer should be private. The ruling is the first made on the ethics of CCTV in churches and was made in response to a Canterbury vicar who applied to install two cameras so his church could be left open during the day.
Morag Ellis QC, commissary general of the Diocese of Canterbury, said: "Funerals and baptisms, in particular, are examples of occasions on which people are likely to be very sensitive," she said.
"Areas set aside for private devotions seem to me to fall within the especially sensitive category where one would not expect to be filmed while praying.
"Similarly, in any churches where sacramental Confession or other ministries of individual pastoral support, such as healing, are practised, there should be no filming in the part or parts of the church set aside for such purposes," she said.
She added that footage should be keep for a maximum of four weeks "because damage and theft in the church, where recordings could be of evidential value, will not always be spotted immediately".