The Pelican in St. Mary's

We moved on to St. Mary’s in the rain. It is the warmest day so far but it rained off and on until about 2:00. As I was taking a shot of a lists of all the priests who served St. Mary’s, an elderly little woman came up to me and expressed her pleasure in my interest in such things. Someone had wanted to take it down, but she encouraged him to leave it. I know this fine brass figurine looks like an eagle, but it’s actually a pelican. European pelicans are different than American pelicans. Meisha explained to me that since the mother pelican will sometimes peck at her breast to feed her young with her own blood, that the early church associated it with the crucifixion. We have seen some sort of pelican figure in most of the churches we have visited, most often featured as the base to a lectern.