A Catholic 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 smile that betrays his nervousness.
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.