Priest At Dixon Church Tests Positive For Coronavirus, Diocese Of Sacramento Says
DIXON (CBS13) – The Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento announced Thursday that a priest at St. Peter's Parish in Dixon tested positive for the coronavirus and had celebrated public mass throughout the last week.
Father Hector Montoya was confirmed by the diocese as the positive case, but details on his condition were not released. The church, located at 105 South 2nd Street, has been closed until further notice.
The diocese said in a press release that "key elements of the safety directions set forth for public celebrations of Mass were not in place at this parish."
The diocese said parishioners were notified and the church is being thoroughly sanitized, as further efforts are being made to notify the wider Dixon community.
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"We pray for the recovery of Father Montoya and all who are sick, and we pray for the health and safety of our parishioners, their families and our communities," Diocese of Sacramento Director of Media and Communications Bryan J. Visitacion said in a news release.
Montse Limon works across the street and says she's hardly seen anyone wearing a mask.
"Four or five? Like seriously, not a lot of people were wearing masks. I believe that if you're going to come to church everyone should at least wear them," Limon said. "A lot of them didn't have masks on, they weren't social distancing. so kind of expecting that something was going to happen eventually."
Bryan Visitacion with the Diocese of Sacramento confirmed church leaders, including priests and deacons, were not wearing masks after the Diocese stressed to all clergy the importance of guidelines that allowed them to reopen just 10 days ago.
"Yeah, there's definitely a level of disappointment but again, we want to make sure our parishioners are able to come back to mass, celebrate safely with a peace of mind," Visitacion said. "We're trying to understand why the guidelines weren't followed. We've been very strong about letting our pastors and our deacons know how seriously we've been taking the coronavirus. And we even sent out another message today to the clergy to reiterate our commitment to those guidelines for the protection of our parishioners."
Masses are now canceled at this church until further notice.
The diocese said they are still trying to figure out how many people were exposed, but they do know anywhere from 30 to 80 parishioners have been attending daily mass.