Gadgets get vicar’s blessing

LONDON – God bless this BlackBerry.

A venerable British church has done what e-mail addicts and workaholics have been doing for years – invoking the Almighty’s blessing on their high-tech gadgets.

The Rev. Canon David Parrott blessed a symbolic heap of laptops and smart phones on the altar of London’s 17th-century St. Lawrence Jewry church Monday – an effort, he said, to remind the capital’s busy office workers that God’s grace can reach them in many ways.

“It’s the technology that is our daily working tool, and it’s a technology we should bless,” Parrott said.

Parrott said the blessing ceremony was an update of a traditional back-to-work ceremony called “Plow Monday,” in which villagers gathered to bless a farming implement dragged to the church.