This Actual Catholic Blood Oath Ceremony with Yeti Costume Feels Like An ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Bit

I’m never here to yuck somebody’s yum. If you want to huddle up and do some weird cult stuff, go ahead. As long as everyone’s a consenting adult, why would I care? But not everyone is so nonjudgmental. Therefore, you should be discerning about what freaky activities you choose to record. 

The Clergy in the Archdiocese of Denver should definitely have taken note of this — now, exploits that are straight out of an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia have made it to the catholic news outlet The Pillar. 

According to the report, in 2024 during a school ski trip, a group of students at Denver’s St. John Vianney Theological Seminary were woken by Vice Rector John Nepil. He told them to sit in silence with their mouths taped shut while he pulled each student individually into a separate room. The students report that they were then asked to take a blood oath by a man wearing a Yeti costume as Nepil explained it was the only way to join their family.

Nepil then made each student agree to have their forearm sliced open, before stopping at the last moment to say that the “sacred ritual” they were performing could use grizzly bear blood instead of human blood. Blood was then poured over the student’s arm before Nepil asked them to make “the most guttural scream you can possibly make.” Finally, each student was sent back into the main room covered in blood, with instructions not to tell the other students what they experienced. 

Like I said, weird shit. The incident was confirmed via multiple videos which were sent to The Pillar. “Seminarians were told to scream as if in pain before returning with a bloodied cloth wrapped around their hand and their mouths taped shut, to a room where others waited for their turn to be brought in,” the report stated. 

If this insanity sounds familiar it’s because there’s literally a blood-oath plot line in It’s Always Sunny. In the Season 10 episode “Frank Retires,” Mac says, “I’m gonna take a blood oath,” before brutally slicing his hand open. Somehow, even the writers of Always Sunny weren’t able to conceive of this full story, which really has everything: the Catholic Church, terrified Seminary students, a Yeti costume, “grizzly bear blood” and secrets. 

It seems like the exact scenario Frank would think up in order to initiate the gang into some sort of fraud scheme. But unlike in Always Sunny, there were real consequences for those involved with the Yeti blood sacrifice. In real life, the prankster, Nepil, was forced to step down from his role, though not until the end of the 2024-2025 academic year. “The individual responsible has since been removed from his seminary leadership role and has recommitted to his ongoing personal and spiritual formation,” the Archdiocese told The Pillar. 

And so, the major difference between It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and reality? Frank definitely would have gotten away with it.