Letterkenny, Ireland, Feb 17, 2021 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- The worship of God is ‘utterly essential’ and political leaders need to be told this, the Bishop of Raphoe wrote Tuesday in a pastoral letter marking the beginning of Lent. “It has been said by some persons in public service that ‘religion is non-essential’, that gathering for Mass and other religious services is less important than shopping or physical exercise or many other things. I know that some of you feel that, by cooperating as fully as we are with the government, we are acquiescing in the falsehood that God and his service and our public witness to him are not essential,” Bishop Alan McGuckian of Raphoe wrote Feb. 16, the Tuesday after Quinquagesima.