Blessing of Animals Brings Benediction to Beloved Pets

Thousands of pet lovers and beasts of many species—mammal, reptile, birds, fish—made their way to church, mostly Episcopal, on the summer-like weekend of Oct. 4 and 5 to celebrate the Feast of St. Francis, which includes the beloved Blessing of Animals.

The most extravagant of these spectacles took place at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights on Oct. 5. The 601-foot-long Episcopal edifice, located at 1047 Amsterdam Ave. at West 112th Street, is among the largest churches in the world and could host, if needed, a veritable Noah’s Ark of animals—if Noah could find a place to dock at nearby Riverside Park.

Among the more exotic animals seen at the Cathedral were a small camel; a giant Clydesdale-like horse; some baby goats; a humongous owl trained, it appears, for falconry; and a snake large enough to attract a crowd should its female handler ever wish to show off at Coney Island.

Similar scenes—minus the more exotic members of Noah’s crew—were enacted at other Episcopal parishes this weekend, including St. Luke in the Fields, at 487 Hudson St. in the West Village; St. Bartholomew’s, at 109 E. 50th St.; Church of the Resurrection, at 119 E. 74th St., and the Church of the Holy Trinity, 316 E. 88th St. The historic Trinity Church down at 89 Broadway had an added attraction in the form of NYPD Mounted Unit horses.

Animals were also blessed at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, at 3 W. 65th St., and the Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran at 602 East 9th St., among others.

As for what all this blessing was about—and why so few Roman Catholic parishes seem to participate—it’s a rather long story. A condensed version, however, can be told in two parts.

The first is the story of an Italian man named Giovanni di Pietro Bernardone. Born in the early 1180s—long before “The Sopranos”—he was a young man of privilege who became a poet, a beggar, an itinerant preacher, and founder of the Franciscan order. Non-Christians know the Franciscans in the popular image of Francis in a brown habit with a rope tied around his waist that includes three knots symbolizing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Francis died in October 1226 and was canonized by Pope Gregory IX in July 1228.

Believing that nature was a reflection of God, Francis is considered the patron saint of animals and ecology—thus the annual Blessing of the Animals on the Sunday near Saint Francis’s official feast day of Oct. 4.

The second part of the story is that of the Episcopalian church. During the American Revolutionary War, the American Episcopalian Church evolved from the Anglican Church—which itself had split from the Roman Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation in 16th-century England. The Episcopal Diocese of New York was founded in 1785.

Today, the Episcopal Church is generally quite liberal and inclusive and many parishes also feature broad cultural programming, like the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.

Because of this liberality, while the Franciscan order serves in both Catholic schools and churches, it’s the Episcopal parishes that have more widely taken up the Francis-inspired blessing of animals in recent years.

One notable exception to this is the liberal Roman Catholic Church of St. Francis of Assisi at 135 W. 31st St.

Built in 1892, it is widely known as the home parish of Father Mychal Judge, who in his other role as FDNY chaplain died while praying in the lobby of the South Tower at Ground Zero on 9/11. The church also features a devoted Workers Chapel and recently held the first of what will become an annual mass for the construction workers killed in 9/11.

While the many Episcopal parishes hosting their blessing of the animals on Sunday, the Church of St. Francis of Assisi held its event on Saturday, Oct. 4. Not everyone realized this, however, including two sharp-dressed Staten Island women and the pampered Pomeranian they carried into Sunday-morning mass.

The reporter was at first relieved to the see the trio, as he’d not seen any animals otherwise. When the mass concluded we all realized, aghast and abashed, that though we were in the right church, we were there on the wrong day!

So while God might work in mysterious ways, St. Francis’s Father James Bernard was present to make everything right, and right there on West 31st Street he kindly gave his blessing, a day late, perhaps, but not a penny short to the fluffy Pomeranian and its much-relieved owners.