The varmint<\/a> heard the calling at St. Joseph\u2019s Church on Sept. 25, calmly walking up the candlelit\u00a0steps and through the front doors of the gorgeous place of worship on Sixth Avenue and Washington Place, video released by the church shows.<\/p>\nAs he passes through the door, the masked bandit sniffs around the foyer, presumably for some food, but was quickly spotted by the Father Jonah Teller, the footage shows.<\/p>\n
The quick-footed pastor closed in on the raccoon, cutting off its path and directing it out the door.<\/p>\n
It then scampered down the candlelit steps and up 6th Avenue, shocking passersby \u2014 \u201cI\u2019ve never seen one of those in the city before!\u201d shouted one.<\/p>\n
The critter could have been drawn by the entrancing candle light of the \u201cNight Fire\u201d mass, which the 1833-constructed church holds four times a year.<\/p>\n
The visitation came just a week before the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, which is commemorated with the Blessing of the Animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if his spirit is walking in behind the raccoon, but its a great reminder of St. Francis and of God,\u201d Father Jonah Teller, pastor of the church, told The Post, adding that he hopes the critter does not return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A salvation-seeking raccoon attempted to attend a special mass at a Catholic Church in Greenwich Village. The varmint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1457,135004,4840,31919,57,9,56,63,65,64,58,2380],"class_list":["post-363740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-animals","tag-animals-acting-like-people","tag-catholic-church","tag-cute-animals","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-us-news","tag-west-village"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}