Bless Them Alllll . . .

The closest I ever came to being blessed by a priest was in a bar in Oakland called the Hollow Leg when a drinker suddenly dipped his fingers in a martini and flicked the gin at me.

It seemed like the start of a fight until someone explained that the guy was an unfrocked Jesuit with a drinking problem who used whatever liquid was at hand to bless whoever was around him.

It was a curious moment, to say the least, with the man, his eyes half-closed, sprinkling the room with gin while reciting a blessing in Latin. Afterward, he ate the olive. That was Oakland for you.

The blessing by Msgr. Lloyd Torgerson at the Il Fornaio restaurant in Santa Monica was not like that at all. He appeared sober to me, though he did seem to smile a lot, and the ritual was properly, well, ritualistic.

I mention smiling because I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone sober who smiled as much as Torgerson, although I suppose he gets paid to be, you know, positive and spiritual. Come to think of it, Jimmy Carter also was a big smiler. It must go with the celestial territory.

Torgerson, who is pastor of St. Monica’s Catholic Church, was at Il Fornaio to bless the oven, which is what attracted me to the place. I mean, come on, a blessing of the oven?

A blessing of babies and animals and even martini-drinkers, maybe, but a prayer for something you cook pizzas in? That is sooo Hollywoodian. At least that’s what I thought, but, as usual, I was wrong.

He really did bless the oven. In fact, he blessed us all. The long, the short and the tall.

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Il Fornaio is part of a chain of 15 restaurants owned by Larry Mindel, who I am told is very successful and very rich. Each one of his restaurants has been blessed and each one is making a lot of money, so who’s laughing?

They are upscale Italian eateries, which probably isn’t what L.A. needs another one of, but we could use a blessing or two just the same. Maybe a consecration of the ATMs for use after dark.

When I heard that Il Fornaio’s oven was about to be sanctified, I figured it was just another gimmick to attract attention, like dressing up in a chicken outfit to get customers to a fast-food place.

But then I was informed by Mindel that it was a tradition in Italy, where Il Fornaio (meaning bakery) began as a baking school, and that’s why they were doing it . . . though I suspect, because I was hustled by a publicist, that it may have been an attention-grabber too. It grabbed mine.

Msgr. Torgerson, whose church boasts members like Mayor Richard Riordan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other free-world intellectuals, saw nothing gimmicky in it at all.

I found him sitting at a booth in the neo-Firenzic establishment glancing through an 896-page volume called “The Book of Blessings.” When I asked if there was a specific blessing for ovens, he replied that there was a blessing for almost everything.

“Why not an oven?” he asked, his smile radiating throughout the room. It was like looking directly into the sun. I had to squint. It glowed even brighter when he said, “Isn’t that a tremendous idea?” I thought for a moment he might burst into flame.

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As it turned out, there is no special blessing for ovens, so Torgerson had to wing it, though I suppose there is a more spiritual term for improvising under those conditions. He used the Blessing for New Buildings.

“The Eucharist is the bread of life,” he explained when I seemed skeptical, “and since they serve the staff of life, that’s the connection.” I almost expected him to add, “Dig?”

During the blessing, he stood next to Larry Mindel, behind a counter lined with rows of cheese, mushroom pieces, onions and half-made pizzas. “Do you need a blessing?” Torgerson asked the 75 people who crowded around the counter. They answered in union, “Yeeessss!”

The guy was terrific, like a combination of Knute Rockne and John the Baptist and maybe even Mary Lou Retton, the way she was always happy and smiling and flipping about.

Then he went on to bless the ovens, the pizza, the bread, the building, the staff and everyone else within earshot. It was kind of an all-embracing ecumenical blessing. He added a special note of advice to the waiters, “Let you by your smile and your hospitality make this special.”

Placed in a more secular context, he was saying this is no deli, boys, so don’t bad-mouth the customers. At the end, he sprinkled the crowd with water, and I’m thinking that if it was gin in Oakland it probably should have been a little white wine down here. Perhaps a nice Sauvignon Blanc.

Torgerson got a big hand afterward, although I’m not sure one is supposed to clap at a blessing, but what the . . . heck. I heard him say to Mindel beforehand, “I’ll do the blessing then work my way out,” which is what he did, smiling all the way.

I’m thinking of asking him to bless my word processor, but I don’t want a lot of happiness programmed into it. Just a byte or two will do.

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Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com