What started as a spiritual cleanse turned into a gastrointestinal purge. In January 2025, seven people in Europe came down with cholera after sipping or splashing themselves with holy water brought from a sacred Ethiopian well.
The holy water, it turns out, was teeming with drug-resistant Vibrio cholerae bacteria.
An unwanted spiritual experience
You wouldn’t think a bottle of holy water could carry disease. It’s ritually blessed, revered, some even say it has healing powers. But these bacteria don’t seem to care much about any of that. In early 2025, seven people in Europe were contracted the pathogen from a holy site in Ethiopia. For four of them, the illness — cholera — was acquired without ever leaving European soil.
This was striking as Europe usually gets less than a dozen cholera cases per year. In this case, cholera, a disease typically associated with contaminated water in developing countries, had found its way into European hospitals through a backchannel: devotion.
The outbreak was imported from the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Since mid-2022, Ethiopia has been battling an expansive cholera crisis, with more than 58,000 reported cases and over 700 deaths by early 2025.
But Amhara is also host to Bermel Giorgis, a revered holy well attracting pilgrims who seek spiritual and physical healing. In the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, holy water — known as tsebel — is believed to possess the power to exorcise demons and cure illnesses. Pilgrims often consume or bathe in this water and frequently take it home, believing in its curative properties.
Apparently, cholera made its way to this well and infected the water. Three people of the seven people who got cholera traveled to Ethiopia. However, the other four didn’t. Instead, they likely got infected by drinking or being splashed with contaminated holy water that someone else brought back from Ethiopia. Two of the tourists required intensive care, but thankfully, everyone recovered well.
Faith and science
Holy water has been revered for centuries. But in a microbial world, even the most sacred liquid can carry hidden dangers. This story isn’t meant to be a criticism of faith, but it is a sign that religious beliefs and modern disease surveillance need to be more in tune. Sacred practices can coexist with public health — but only if we acknowledge the risks and work together to reduce them.
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This means that faith and microbiology have to speak to each other, especially in an age when a bottle of water can travel continents in a carry-on bag. Infections no longer respect borders, and believers should be aware of this. Pathogens don’t respect belief, and sacred practices aren’t immune to contamination.
Religious leaders can also play a vital role in public health by guiding their communities to practice faith safely — promoting hygienic rituals, discouraging the consumption of untreated holy water, and collaborating with health officials to spread accurate information.
The study was published in the journal Eurosurveillance.