By Tim Binnall
A Colorado priest found himself in hot water with his superiors after he hoodwinked his seminary students into thinking they were participating in a blood oath involving a man in a Yeti costume. The bizarre incident, which came to light this week, reportedly occurred in January of 2024 during a ski trip organized by St. John Vianney Theological Seminary of Denver. The getaway took a strange turn for the 15 students when vice rector Fr. John Nepil, who led the excursion, woke them up in the middle of the night and gathered them together for what he claimed was "a sacred tradition."
Ordered to sit in silence awaiting their turn to participate, each student was subsequently taken individually to a trailer on the property where the mysterious ritual was to unfold. During the private ceremony, prospective priests were presented with a dagger and told by Nepil that "the only way you can enter into this family is you've got to make a blood oath." Adding a surreal element to the scene was the presence of a man in a Yeti costume, presumably there to oversee the "sacred tradition." After convincing the student that they had the mettle to take part in the ceremony, Nepil would stop them just moments before they committed to the 'blood oath' by offering them "another option."
The proverbial 'Plan B' involved dousing the seminarian's hand with what the priest claimed was grizzly bear blood and telling them to unleash "the most guttural scream you can possibly make" before being sent to rejoin their fellow students with tape over their mouth so that they remain silent about the 'ritual' the others would soon experience. While Nepil saw the 'ceremony' as a humorous bonding exercise for the men, it soon turned into a scandal at the seminary in part due to Nepil's unwise decision to film the Yeti-accompanied ceremony. As one might imagine, the video quickly became 'must see' among stunned students and staff who spread the footage far and wide within the confines of the community.
The scuttlebutt surrounding the ceremony eventually reached the Archdiocese of Denver, which launched an investigation into the ski trip's "side quest' and concluded that it was a misguided "farce" wherein "at no time was there risk of bodily harm." That said, at one point during the process, Church officials actually enlisted an exorcist to cleanse the seminarians who participated in the ritual. Explaining that decision, the archdiocese indicated that the consultation was done "out of an abundance of caution, due to potential spiritual harm from such oaths." For his part, Nepil offered a profound apology for the prank he described as "a well-intended moment to try to be funny," but that "never should have happened."