It is a tradition of St. Andrews to have a blessing of the animals on the Sunday nearest to the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis is the patron saint of animals and the environment. Pictures of the blessings are below.

St. Francis was born at Assisi in Umbria, c. 1182 into an affluent family. Although Francis evidenced a love for bright clothing and rich friends as a youth he displayed an increasing disillusionment toward the world fairly early in his life. By 1205 he began giving away some of the family's money to those in need to the consternation of his father who had envisioned a commercial career for him. After a pilgrimage to Rome, where he begged at the church doors for the poor, he said he had had a mystical vision of Jesus Christ in the Church of San Damiano in which the Icon of Christ Crucified said to him, "Francis, Francis, go and repair My house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins". He thought this to mean the ruined church in which he was presently praying, and so sold some cloth from his father's store to assist the priest there for this purpose. It eventually became clear that it was more than this one church that Christ referred to. In 1209, Francis led his first eleven followers to Rome to seek permission from Pope Innocent III to found a new religious order. He was given provisional permission which was formalized in 1223 when the final rule of the Fransicans was formalized.

Although nativity drawings and paintings existed earlier, St Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas by setting up the first known three-dimensional presepio or crèche (Nativity scene) in the town of Greccio near Assisi, around 1220. He used real animals to create a living scene so that the worshipers could contemplate the birth of the child Jesus in a direct way, making use of the senses, especially sight.

While he was praying on the mountain of Verna, during a forty-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas (September 29), Francis is said to have had a vision on or about September 14, 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a result of which he received the stigmata. Suffering from these stigmata and from an eye disease, Francis received care in several nearby cities to no avail. In the end, he was brought back to a hut next to the Porziuncola. Here, in the place where it all began, feeling the end approaching, he spent the last days of his life dictating his spiritual testament. He died on the evening of October 3, 1226, singing Psalm 141.

On July 16, 1228, he was pronounced a saint by Pope Gregory IX (the former cardinal Ugolino di Conti, friend of St Francis and Cardinal Protector of the Order). The next day, the Pope laid the foundation stone for the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi.

2009 Blessing of the Animals