Smoke from Canadian wildfires is pushing some services indoors at the 102nd Solemn Novena to St. Ann in Scranton, which opens Friday.<\/p>\n
Novena officials announced Thursday evening on social media that \u201cin the interest of the health and safety of our pilgrims and visitors,\u201d the 8 a.m. televised Mass and novena service will be celebrated indoors.<\/p>\n
The state Department of Environmental Protection has issued an air-quality Purple Alert (very unhealthy) for the entire state for Friday. That\u2019s one step higher than the Red Alert (unhealthy) that was in effect Thursday. The only higher level is Maroon (hazardous).<\/p>\n
Novena officials said audio of the Mass and novena will still be broadcast outdoors Friday for those who are on the basilica grounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are hopeful that air quality will improve as the day progresses and will continue to monitor conditions throughout the day,\u201d the social media post said. \u201cPlease keep in mind that current health officials recommend limiting outdoor activity, especially for children, older adults, and anyone with heart or lung conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The novena\u00a0runs through July 26, the feast day of the namesake saint, at St. Ann\u2019s Monastery Shrine and Basilica in West Side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Smoke from Canadian wildfires is pushing some services indoors at the 102nd Solemn Novena to St. Ann in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,803,28,178,180,179,729],"class_list":["post-245765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}