The Diocese of Armenia, Quindio department, must provide sanitary
facilities in all its churches, a court decided Thursday after a
pensioner filed an appeal.
The 66-year-old pensioner, Luis Enrique Herrera Peñuela, demanded that Armenia churches implement sanitary facilities and easy access for disabled people "to ensure the welfare of all believers when attending religious services," El Tiempo reported.
Herrera decided to file an appeal after an elderly man urinated in the church due to a malfunction of his bladder.
Rodrigo Giraldo, pastor of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral of Armenia, the most important church in Quindio, thinks that the idea of bathrooms in churches "should be widely discussed". However, he added, the sanitary facilities should not be in the church but in a place nearby.
Thanks to Herrera, visitors of the churches in Circasia, Filandia, Quimbaya, Montenegro, La Tebaida and Armenia will never have to endure agonizingly full bladders during services again.
