All Creatures Great and Small Gather for Feast Day Blessings in Mexico Reuters
go to original January 19, 2015

Animals and their humans at the blessing in Mexico City. (Reuters)
 
Beloved pets enjoyed the limelight in Mexico City at a blessing ceremony to mark the feast day of Saint Anthony, known as the protector of animals.

Pet owners arrived with their animals at the San Bernardino Church for a blessing and a sprinkling of holy water to protect them from danger and misfortune.

January 17 marks the anniversary of the death of Saint Anthony the Abbot, a fourth-century Christian who gave his inheritance to the poor and led a monastic life in the desert with only animals for company.

The old-age Catholic tradition was brought to Mexico during Spanish colonial rule by Franciscan monks in the 1500s and has been heartily embraced by animal lovers in Mexico City's southern borough of Xochimilco due to the prominence of farmhouses in the area.

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