Local Church to Bless Pets, Meet Some ‘Outragehiss’ Animals Sunday

Fort Lee’s is celebrating its annual “Blessing of the Animals” Sunday with an outdoor worship service to which people are encouraged to bring their pets or dress up in animal costumes and an “exotic animal show” after the service.

The worship service will take place at 10 a.m. outside the church—weather permitting—and Outragehiss Pets, a Chestnut Ridge, N.Y. organization dedicated to teaching children about wildlife, will put some of their exotic animals on display at 11:30 a.m.

Rev. Allison Moore said the event is tied to both the Feast Day of Saint Francis, which is typically Oct. 4, and this year, to Halloween.

“Saint Francis was known in part for his kindness to animals and his ability to delight in animals,” Moore said. “And the church has then used that because people have important relationships with their pets.”

Moore said that the church honors that relationship and acknowledges it “symbolically.”

“We do a shorter than usual service with prayers talking about all of creation, and then people bring their pets to the Communion,” she said. “We give the humans Communion, and then we say a little prayer, [for example] ‘Bless Fluffy the Snake and David, his owner, that they may delight in each other.’”

Good Shepherd has been doing the animal blessing event for the past five or six years, Moore said, but this year, they decided to move it a little later and connect it to Halloween.

“Halloween is the eve of All Saints Day,” she said. “It seemed like a good idea to not just bless pets but come in pet costumes.”

She said the Outragehiss Pets show was added so that people don’t necessarily have to attend the worship service in order to take part, adding that she requested a hedgehog, a chinchilla, a Burmese python and a skink—a type of lizard—“that eats bugs during the service.”

The is located at 1576 Palisade Ave. The outdoor, “Blessing of the Animals” worship service is Sunday at 10 a.m. followed by the “exotic animals show” by Outragehiss Pets at 11:30 a.m.