No answers yet from RVC

Pastor Was Ill on Christmas?

Reports are circulating among parishioners that the pastor, Msgr. James Lisante,
(right) was visibly ill at the two masses he celebrated on Christmas Day. The diocesan spokesman and anecdotal evidence from observers have confirmed that Msgr. Lisante celebrated the 10:30 and 12:00 masses on Christmas Day.

From what I am hearing, Msgr. Lisante was so sick that he looked "green" and looked "as if he had lost a great deal of weight." Apparently, during Mass, the pastor mentioned that he was not feeling well and refrained from shaking hands after Mass with the many parishioners who customarily wait in a lengthy receiving line to greet the popular priest after his Sunday liturgies.

Of course, this may all be coincidental, but the symptoms of hepatitis A include jaundice, a yellowing of the skin. It's not out of the realm of possibility that a yellow skin tone could very well appear "green" in certain individuals.

Taken with other reports of Fr. Seagriff's announcement on Sunday, Dec. 18, that the pastor was so indisposed with "a stomach virus" that he might not be celebrate Mass on Christmas and reports that the pastor did not celebrate Mass on the weekend after Christmas, it would appear that the pastor may have been quite ill for at least three weeks.

Considering the various news reports cited in previous posts and other evidence that continues to filter out, even impartial observers no doubt have a reasonable hypothesis about the identity of the HAV carrier.
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Labels: Bishop Murphy, Christmas Day, Communion, Diocese of Rockville Centre, hepatitis A, msgr. lisante, our lady of lourdes, Sean Dolan
Monday, January 10, 2011The Face of Hepatitis in America?

At yesterday's 9 am Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes, one of the priests in residence, Fr. Cletus Nwaogwugwu, a Nigerian priest who serves as hospital chaplain at area hospitals, described in his sermon the chain of events last week that led to him being mistakenly identified as "the face of hepatitis in America."

He explained that last Monday when news of the hepatitis contamination scare broke, he was approached by the media for permission to film his 8 pm Mass in the Our Lady of Lourdes School chapel. He refused permission so CBS News filmed part of the Mass through the glass windows on the chapel doors.

Fr. Cletus said he began receiving phone calls from friends asking him if he was sick. At that point he was confused by the flurry of attention over his health, though he finally realized, to his dismay, that he was suspected to be the HAV carrier because of his chance exposure on the CBS news video here:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/ny-church-delivers-hepatitis-a-scare-12536232

It goes without saying that an immediate and thorough investigation of this matter should be conducted at once so this conscientious and exemplary priest may be instantly absolved of any association with the HAV contamination scare.

In the previous blog posts, I describe how various news sources revealed that the HAV carrier was 1) a man, 2) a member of the clergy, and 3) was present at both of the fateful masses on Christmas Day. It has also been revealed that the HAV carrier combined the consecrated hosts into one ciborium after communion. (It should be noted that at Our Lady of Lourdes, this is the usual function of the celebrating priest in the post-communion rite.) Upon learning of the mixing of the hosts, health officials expanded the original possibility of contamination to 5 more subsequent Masses the following day and a much larger range of people than was first supposed.

Several eyewitnesses have confirmed that the pastor, Msgr. James Lisante, celebrated both fateful Masses on Christmas Day---a fact that was confirmed by Sean Dolan, the diocesan spokesman, who stated that Msgr. Lisante "was involved in the communion process" at both masses. Most fascinating of all, an associate pastor at the parish, Fr. Ed Seagriff, announced the Sunday before Christmas that Msgr. Lisante was ill at that time with "a stomach virus," which most observers will recognize is consistent with the symptoms of Hepatitis A.

For those able to connect the dots, there are enough questions here to raise some disturbing speculations. Because it was revealed by the Mary Ellen Laurain, the spokeswoman for the Nassau County Department of Health that the carrier was a clergy member, the parish deserves in justice to know which one of the clergy serving their parish is the carrier in order to clear the other priests in the parish of any involvement in this unfortunate and disastrous incident.
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Labels: Bishop Murphy, Christmas Day, Communion, Diocese of Rockville Centre, hepatitis A, msgr. lisante, our lady of lourdes, Sean Dolan
Thursday, January 6, 2011The Crisis At OLL Deepens
Newsday has just reported that the Nassau County Dept. of Health has officially expanded the number of parishioners exposed to Hepatitis A at Our Lady of Lourdes to include people who received Holy Communion at the 1:30 pm Mass on Christmas Day and the five scheduled Masses the next day.

Apparently, the HAV carrier touched a number of consecrated hosts that were mixed in with a larger number of hosts and distributed at subsequent Masses.

In the prior post I discussed the various news quotes which identify the hepatitis-infected person as being male and a priest who was present at both the 10:30 and noon Christmas Day masses. The information from today's Newsday confirms that the carrier was probably a priest because the priest celebrating the mass is typically the one who empties the ciboria and combines all the remaining consecrated hosts after Communion, from my recollection of the post-Communion ritual.

Perhaps someone should be investigating these further possibilities which may expand the risk of contamination even more:

If the infected person is a priest and is perhaps the monsignor, it is his usual custom to shake hands, kiss and hug exiting parishioners on his lengthy receiving line after Mass. This kind of contact is obviously even more risky than receiving a possibly contaminated host.


Since it has been documented that HAV-infected persons are more contagious in the weeks before exhibiting symptoms, it is highly possible that the HAV carrier at OLL has been potentially contaminating parishioners for several weeks prior to Christmas.
Is anyone else besides me beginning to think that this contamination crisis has the potential to become even bigger and more involved???


Given the information Newsday provided today, consider this hypothetical possibility:

If the pastor is the Christmas Day HAV Carrier and was contagious for several weeks before Christmas, then he could have contaminated and re-contaminated the entire parish several times over.