Their Sunday Best

The last time priest Ken Deasy ran in the Los Angeles Marathon, a runner trotted up and asked, “Father, do you have a minute?”

The two ran side by side until the runner finished confessing and sped off.

Today, Deasy and about 100 other Roman Catholic priests and nuns will shed their somber habits and clerics and don sneakers and running shorts for the 12th annual Los Angeles Marathon. Their neon-green T-shirts bear a passage from Corinthians: “We do not run aimlessly.”

Indeed, they do not.

They run for silent causes. They run to inspire others. And they run to recruit men and women to their ever-diminishing ranks. In the last three decades, the number of nuns in America has been halved to less than 90,000.

“There is a stereotype of priests and nuns and people think of us as old or boring or sterile--this is a good way to proclaim that we have a joyful life,” said Sister Kathy Bryant, vocation director for the archdiocese of Los Angeles.

These runners are the first to humbly admit that they need all the help they can get. They wear crucifixes and finger rosary beads as they run. The evening before the race, Deasy holds a Mass to bless their running shoes, praying that the various shoes carry runners safely and swiftly across the finish line.

Last year, when several nuns saw photographs of Jose Luis Molina of Costa Rica winning the marathon, they gasped--it was the nice quiet man who had attended their Mass and had his shoes blessed.

Spectators and fellow runners always egg on the priests and nuns, whose presence is made even more pronounced by green balloons that float over their heads, tethered to their T-shirts, said Sister Mary Sean, 56.

Sean, a geometry teacher at San Gabriel Mission High School, has participated in all 11 previous marathons. It was the unlikely sight of a nun on the run that prompted spectators to yell to Sean, “Go sister, GO!” (Because of a back injury, Sean plans to walk today--a task she figures will take from six to eight hours.)

Bryant, who no longer runs because her knees are shot after eight marathons, was startled the first time someone shouted, “Lookin’ goooood, sister!”

“People don’t usually say that to nuns,” she said.

Sean and the others take it in stride when they are hailed by their fellow runners. Sometimes, a panting racer will ask, “Pray for me.” Once, toward the end of the race, a flagging runner spotted a priest, and playfully called out: “Father, I need the last rites.”

Most of these runners consider the marathon a personal challenge that they will not dodge, even if it means their bodies will ache for days.

“I should be home sitting on a couch watching this,” said Sister Marybeth Walshko, 52, a Banning hospice nurse.

Sister Joanne Marie Otte’s enters her ninth marathon fully aware thatshe’s not prepared. Her idea of training is running to the post office or grocery store from her church.

Her annual participation has created quite a stir at Santa Isabel School in East Los Angeles, where she is principal. Each September her pupils begin timidly asking the 58-year-old nun if she plans to run.

Otte hopes her participation will prove to students that nuns and priests are able to have fun and are not merely black-clothed drones murmuring over Bibles.

Most of the runners have prayer sponsor sheets that friends, family members and people from work have signed, agreeing to pray for a particular runner today.

Sean has collected almost 1,000 names on her sheets, circulating them at the school where she works as well as at several other schools. When her muscles start rebelling and begging for mercy during the final miles of the marathon, she knows she will force herself to keep going, reluctant to let down her supporters.

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“We tell our students to finish what you start and to do it well. I would not want to come in Monday morning and not have finished the marathon,” she said.

Even so, in the days before the race, Sean had her worries. “It’s overwhelming--can I really do this?” she wondered aloud. “I know my determination is so strong I will. I’ve always finished, so I trust I will again.”

Walshko dedicated one marathon to ease the suffering of a nun stricken with lymphoma. Deasy is devoting each mile of today’s 26.2-mile marathon to a different issue. Mile 10, for instance, is devoted to a nun’s sister suffering from cancer in Mexico. Mile 11 is dedicated to the nun herself, who wishes she was home caring for her sister.

When one nun asked 42-year-old Deasy which would be his toughest mile, he answered without hesitation: the 23rd mile. Then dedicate that mile to me, asked the nun, who is contemplating leaving sisterhood.

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Who gets Deasy’s last mile? The parishioners in his former church, Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers convicted of murdering their millionaire parents.

Six weeks ago, an actor friend of Deasy’s asked if he would join him in running the marathon. The friend wanted to lose weight. Deasy, who had not run the marathon in several years, wanted the challenge. And so Deasy began training. He ran five days a week for about an hour, covering about eight miles in his new church’s Crenshaw neighborhood, running through the streets. He also rode his BMW motorcycle over to Gold’s Gym in Venice, where he worked out with weights.

Today he will be wearing his black “lucky” shorts, the ones he has worn in three other marathons.

In his mind, the shorts became lucky after his first marathon. In that race, he reached Mile 24 and stopped running. His body felt crushed. His mind felt too weary to keep his legs running.

Suddenly, a spectator--a large woman--bellowed at him. “Honey, you’ve come this far, you get your butt down this road and finish the race.”

To Deasy, it looked like she was about to make sure he kept running. He laughed and resumed running.

“I’d met my guardian angel,” he said.

When he runs today, he hopes she will be there again, shoving him when he needs it.