Praise the Ford! : Motorists Seek Help From Above at Annual Blessing of the Cars

Licking flames and checkered flags covered a priest’s usually plain white stole.

Holy water rained down on a hearse.

By the end of Saturday’s fourth annual Blessing of the Cars at Verdugo Park, sinners had merged seamlessly with saints, conspicuous consumption with spiritual hunger.

Drivers and passengers did not come from one particular religious perspective, but they did share a deep devotion to the automotive gods. Most showed up figuring a spiritual warranty would probably outlast anything offered by a mortal dealer.

“This baby’s never going down!” exulted Phil Rubin of Hollywood after Father Glenn Sequeira blessed his 1970 GTO. “I feel safer already.”

Rick Lusiczyk of Burbank resembled a proud father at a baptism, capturing the yellow gleam of his 1955 Ford SD on a video recorder after its third annual blessing.

“It’s like some people carry a four-leaf clover, or boxers cross themselves before the bell rings,” he said. “It’s just a little something you can do to feel like someone’s on your side.”

The blessing took up just two hours of a daylong celebration of vintage car culture that drew hundreds of hot rods, convertibles, two-seaters and gas-guzzlers--most made before 1970.

Around the vehicles stood a rubbernecking assortment of hipsters, punks, Goths, beboppers and squares, many matching their appearance to their vehicle’s era or aesthetic.

A black-clad group evoked the Addams Family, enjoying a picnic lunch next to their hearse. Two women in poodle skirts framed a turquoise 1956 Thunderbird. Surfers bobbed their heads to a rockabilly song from the bandstand as an ornately decorated surfboard stood guard over their wood-paneled Chevy.

Sequeira, from Holy Family Catholic Church in Glendale, passed through the entire park, pausing by nearly every car to say a short prayer and use a juniper branch to sprinkle holy water. Trailing him were several employees from a digital photography studio, offering owners of freshly blessed cars a chance to order snapshots of the event.

Sequeira, who wore a fuzzy orange cross pinned to his white robe, later acknowledged that some might find the event odd, or even unbecoming. But he said it is important for religious leaders to bring a sense of spirituality to secular settings.

“It’s not just the material things we are blessing. It’s also the people,” he said. “It’s a very open, universal prayer.”

The Catholic Book of Blessings contains instructions for sanctifying objects both animate and inanimate--everything from kitchen appliances to animals. Seaport towns often stage a “blessing of the fleet.”

Father Gregory Coiro, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, recalled a long-running ritual in La Canada Flintridge, where he lives. City officials there visited a local Catholic church every New Year’s Day to have the priest bless the float they planned to enter in Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses parade.

“It always won a prize,” Coiro noted.

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Then again, he added, people can take it too far.

“I remember one woman who tried blessing her home computer,” he said. “It was a fine idea until she shorted it out with holy water.”

A similar eager spirit revealed itself Saturday.

One motorist left a box full of parts with a note for Sequeira: “Hard luck one week before the blessing. Please bless this pile of s--- from my blown ’57 Chevy Bel-Air motor! Thanx.”

Already comparing notes on miles per gallon and RPMs, auto enthusiasts couldn’t help speculating on the lift a blessing could provide.

“We had this done last year and it ran great,” Bob Saenz of Palm Springs said of his 1961 Cadillac hearse. “We need protection from the heat.”

His task finished, the priest stood in the shade, munching a sausage and resting his sore blessing arm.

“In L.A. we spend so much time in our cars, so it’s important that we feel secure,” said Sequeira, who drives a non-customized 1988 Oldsmobile. “I often pray the rosary when I’m in traffic. It’s better than the radio.”