Officials were recently alerted to an event at which thousands of people crammed themselves into a small church. News of the event leaked after 15-year-old Tobias Ninivaugh told his mother that he had been to Mass at Our Lady of the Angels. His mother asked him what the priest had spoken about. “About the thousands of people who were surrounding the altar to worship,” he said. Shocked at this revelation, she acted quickly, telling Tobias to quarantine himself and calling local health officials to report the possibility of a superspreader event.

City guidelines cap the number of people allowed at religious services at 250. Soon after receiving the allegation, city officials contacted the priest who led the service. Refusing to deny that thousands had been present, he added, “but I couldn’t see them.” Although closing one’s eyes at a religious service is known as a type of worship practice, officials argue that such willful ignorance of the presence of a crowd does not remove the culpability of the priest. The city hopes to press charges against him next week, a spokesperson said.

The bishop has lobbied on behalf of his priest, claiming that there has been a “mistake.” “The people under suspicion were present by their power, but not as if they were contained by the church’s walls,” he said. The city spokesperson refused to concede the case and insisted, “the only mistake the city will admit to is that somehow we did not stop such a large gathering from occurring in the first place.”

An event of the scale described by Ninivaugh not only violates city laws and CDC guidelines but risks spreading the virulent coronavirus to thousands of vulnerable men and women. While Ninivaugh is now four days into his quarantine and is not showing symptoms, officials have had difficulty tracking down others who attended. When pressed, Ninivaugh made some contradictory claims. He said that thousands of people had attended, that the church did not seem crowded at all, and that he did not think the event would cause the spread of the virus.

Protocols require that those who attended the event manifest their whereabouts and submit to contact tracing. Officials are calling upon all attendees to quarantine themselves and to reach out to health officials. One source told us that the mayor’s office does not know if it will be feasible to pin down the location of many of the attendees, but they hope soon to make a public statement about the possible effects of this likely superspreader event. 

Last night, the mayor issued a final plea, “To all who attended the January 11th service at Our Lady of the Angels, please make your presence known. Whether you are a citizen of this city or another, we need your help for the protection of the most vulnerable in our midst. If you do not cooperate, we will do everything in our power to ensure that justice occurs.”

When reached for comment, the priest under investigation responded to the mayor’s words with a short statement: “Now more than ever, we certainly need the help of all those who attended that Mass.”

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Image: Enrique López-Tamayo Biosca, Església de Santa Magdalena, CC-BY-2.0