Marmion Abbey Priest Finishes Coronavirus Quarantine
March 19, 2020
AURORA—Benedictine Father Joel Rippinger of Marmion Abbey in Aurora got caught in the coronavirus quarantine efforts on March 9 after returning from what he calls a “wonderful” pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
About 95 people were part of an America magazine trip, which left the U.S. on Feb. 27. Time at the Mount of Beatitudes and the area around Galilee was followed by several days in Jerusalem and its environs, including a visit to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on March 3.
The tour left Jerusalem on March 8, and by March 9, Father Joel was teaching at Marmion Academy.
But back across the ocean, March 9 was when most everything was shut down in Bethlehem after a handful of tourists from Greece were discovered to have the virus after returning home, and several workers in the hotel where the Greek travelers stayed in Bethlehem tested positive for the virus.
Father Rippinger’s tour leaders received word from the Israeli Ministry of Heath, and Father Joel was informed that he and his fellow pilgrims were included in a wide group that could have been exposed.
“They suggested that all of us on the trip enter a 14-day self-quarantine,” he says. So he immediately entered his cell at the monastery.
He did make a trip to the emergency room and was told he had no symptoms and should continue to monitor himself during the self-quarantine.
“I have been doing that,” he says, adding that no symptoms have surfaced. But because he was at the Academy on Monday, there were no classes held there on Wednesday so the school could be deep-cleaned.
The pilgrimage was part-sabbatical for Father Joel and he says, “I think the Lord is telling me if you really take Lent seriously, here’s your chance!”
“When I saw those numbers in Italy,” he adds, “I certainly understand why decisions of last few days” were made.
It is “a new experience” for him to say Mass in his room, he says, adding that he’s been praying and reading what he otherwise would not have had time to do. He is, in other words, seeing it as “a gift of time” for him.
And he was looking forward to the quarantine’s end on March 17 — 14 days after he was in Bethlehem.
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