This past Sunday we were vacationing on an Island on the Great Lakes and during the Homily a woman a few rows back passed out!
I heard some commotion and it caught the Deacon’s attention. He stopped and asked everyone to Pray a Hail Mary while other partitioners called EMS and a few others went to get her a cup of water and some towels to clean up some of the substances which happened while passed out.
Then the Priest left the Altar and went to console the woman as she was regaining consciousness.
This happened at another Parish my Wife and I attended long ago and the Priest did not stop the Mass (if I recall correctly, it was during the Consecration). The EMS came in with the gurney and wheeled the elderly man out the side isle.
I thought it was kind of odd to continue on, but at the same time, timing might have had something to do with it (in what part of the Sacred Liturgy was taking place).
Is there something in the GIRM that states the Mass must go on when an emergency is taking place or is this the call of the Priest?
That experience with the ailing woman would have been very unsettling. I hope she ended up being ok.
I seem to recall a priest mentioning something about such things during a homily and from what I recall he said barring an unsafe situation to the congregation, the Mass must continue and parishioners are there to hopefully assist the person.
I can’t forget a daily Mass in Catholic grade school when I was young. I think it was just prior to the Eucharistic Prayer. We had a stern Irish priest at the time and one of the boys in the pews (no pun intended) loudly passed gas, which caused a ripple of stifled giggles through other children. The priest stopped the prayer dead and very angrily denounced the act, reminding the children of the sanctity of Mass. So that was an instance where Mass was stopped by a priest.
As an aside, many years later as an adult, I was talking with my old Kindergarten teacher during coffee in the church basement after Mass. I hadn’t known as a child, but apparently she was a gossip and knew everything about everyone back then. The Irish priest was retired by then and living in a nursing home. Without even being on the subject, she told me something about that priest (did not have to do with children) that made me feel like I was punched in the stomach. One of those things that turns a whole part of your memories as a child upside down. I wish she hadn’t have told me.
I would generally trust the priest’s discretion as to whether to interrupt the Mass.
A few years ago at a parish in Virginia, the priest was recovering from pneumonia and was shaking while standing in the pulpit. I wished he would have given his sermon sitting down. I thought of going to the rectory and asking one of the other priests to come to the church in case the priest saying Mass could not finish it. At Communion, too, I wished the priest had just sat down and let the extraordinary ministers distribute Communion. This was an extraordinary situation.