She has come by helicopter and she has arrived by boat.

But this year, Cuba's patron saint, La Caridad del Cobre -- Our Lady of Charity -- received a more stylish entrance to the annual Mass in her honor: in the back seat of a silver convertible 320SL Mercedes-Benz.

Organizers chose to bring the two-foot statue of the saint in the tony convertible so that it would be more visible during the yearly procession from its shrine in Coconut Grove to Hialeah Race Track. On Tuesday, 15,000 worshipers packed the grandstands for the Mass and celebration directed by Miami Archbishop John Favalora.

``It's tradition,'' said Lourdes del Rio, as she hurried into the crowd. ``It's the one thing that most strongly unites Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits.''

Crowds of old and young, Cuban and non-Cuban, religious and curious streamed into the racing park on a hot, wet night. Singing side by side, they rubbed rosaries and fanned themselves with Cuban flags.

Twelve riders on horseback carrying Cuban flags trotted in front of the statue as it was brought through the crowd and up on stage. Chanting ``Our Lady of Charity -- Save Cuba,'' spectators crowded around the statue to steal a glance or throw it flowers.

``It's the patron saint of Cuba,'' said Mario Miranda, 45, who has helped carry the statue for 27 years. ``They're not allowed to do it in Cuba. So we do it here.''

This year, however, the Cuban government departed from tradition and allowed thousands on the island to celebrate the occasion.

Each year since 1961, worshipers in Miami have joined in prayer to the Virgin, who is said to have appeared to three fishermen off the coast of Cuba in the early 1600s.

Our Lady of Charity became the official patroness of Cuba in 1916 after soldiers who won Cuba's independence from Spain, and credited the Virgin's intervention, petitioned the Vatican on her behalf.

For years, the statue -- smuggled out of Cuba in a suitcase in 1961 -- was ferried by boat for years at the Miami Marine Stadium, until Hurricane Andrew battered the stadium in 1992.

Since then, the statue has been honored at the racetrack, where it usually arrived by helicopter.

Tuesday's Mass marked a special occasion when Favalora announced that Dionisio Garcia, bishop of Bayamo-Manzanillo in Cuba, would give the main speech of the evening -- the first Cuban Catholic official to do so.

The crowd responded with applause.

``The Virgin of Charity unites all Cubans, no matter where they are,'' Garcia said.

Our Lady of Charity also has become the popular icon of balseros, who ask the saint to look over them before leaving on their journeys across the Florida Straits. That's what Alberto Godoy did.

``It's a promise I made at sea,'' said Godoy, who arrived in Key West on a raft from Cuba in 1992. Godoy was at the Mass with his wife, Odalys, and 3-month-old daughter, Diana Maria.

``I'll keep doing this until the day I die,'' he said.