Priest prevents desecration of the Eucharist during Mass in Honduras

ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 19, 2024 / 07:00 am

A priest prevented a man from taking off with an unconsumed consecrated host after approaching to receive Communion during the Mass for the second anniversary of the St. Lucy shrine in the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán in Honduras.

Father Nery Adalberto Gómez Pérez, parish priest of St. Mark the Evangelist in Ocotepeque, was invited last Friday, Dec. 13, the saint’s feast day, to celebrate Mass at the St. Lucy shrine, where a large crowd of faithful had gathered.

At Communion time during Mass, among the faithful was a man with a mustache, taller than average and wearing a white T-shirt and a baseball cap.

Waiting his turn, he stood before the priest, who pronounced the words “the body of Christ” without getting a response from the man who would later be confirmed as the desecrator.

The sequence, which can be seen beginning at 1:06:11 on the Facebook page of Channel 16 in Ocotepeque, shows how the man makes an unusual gesture, moving his mouth forward to take the host from the priest’s hand instead of waiting for the priest to place it on his tongue.

With the Eucharist between his teeth and half sticking out of his mouth, the desecrator stands for a moment without knowing what to do and looks at the priest with a nervous smile.

Without consuming the host, the man turns around to return to his place in the pews, but the priest immediately realizes what had happened. First he points at him with his hand, but then he has to pause distributing Communion to follow the man to his place and get him to give back the unconsumed host.

After reserving the profaned Eucharist, the priest resumed distributing Communion and concluding the Mass without any major incidents.

The Eucharist, ‘the greatest treasure of the Church’

At the end of the liturgical celebration, Gómez took the opportunity to catechize on the importance of the Eucharist and the responsibility of all Catholics to safeguard it.

The priest stressed that the Eucharist “is the greatest treasure of the Church” and, given that priests, religious, and laypeople are part of the Church, he reminded the faithful that “we must all be zealous for this treasure.”

“That is why at the moment of Communion, instead of being distracted,” the celebrant continued, “something that we all must do, if the Eucharist is our treasure, is to be vigilant that no one does something wrong.”

“This time it was my turn today. But it’s not just my problem. It’s also everyone’s problem. Everyone must be vigilant,” he insisted.

He also pointed out that, in these situations, the layperson has “the authority as a Christian” to demand of a desecrator: “Give me the consecrated host, please. Give it to me. Because if you are not going to honor it, give it to me, and I will honor it,” and then give it to a priest.

Before concluding, Gómez recalled that the Eucharist is “the presence of God among us, real and alive. If not, this is a theater.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.