Holy Ghost Festival celebrates queen's bread-to-roses miracle

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jul 21, 2006 | by Angela Woodall, STAFF WRITER

NEWARK -- Almost 800 years after a Portuguese queen turned bread into roses to hide her charitable works from her husband -- an occurrence known as the Miracle of the Roses -- one of Newark's oldest communities is preparing to celebrate the event Saturday and Sunday at the 84th Holy Ghost Festival.

With Father Antonio Reis' blessing, the first cut of meat Thursday kicked off what will be three days of nonstop cooking of 15,000 pounds of beef by volunteers.

"It's busy, busy," said Frank Martins, a retired butcher.

By Saturday, the meat and 2,000 loaves of bread will be turned into a Portuguese beef and bread soup, known as sopa. The sopa will be free for as many as 6,000 visitors expected to descend on Newark for the Holy Ghost festival, which will feature Mass, two parades, performances by folk dancers and traditional Portuguese dishes.

The Portuguese festival marks the legendary miracle of Queen Isabel. The 13th century Portuguese queen was carrying bread secretly in her mantle to feed Portugal's poor when her husband, King Dinis, stopped her.

When he demanded to know what she was carrying, Isabel replied, "Roses, my beloved husband and king," despite their scarcity in January. When she opened her mantle to prove the claim, the loaves of bread had been transformed into roses.

Today she is known as Queen St. Isabel because of her devotion to the poor, whom she helped sustain with sopa during her reign.

In that spirit, the cultural group, Sociedade Do Espirito Santo, has been putting on the $120,000 festival with donations and year- round fund-raisers.

Festivities begin at 11:30 a.m. Saturday with an outdoor Mass at the pavilion. Singers and dancers will perform throughout the day, and sopa will be served in the afternoon.

A dance will be held in the banquet hall at 8 p.m., and four "queens" will be presented at 9:30 p.m. The festival will continue Sunday with band performances at 9:30 a.m., followed by a parade at 10:30 a.m.

The procession will head east on Thornton Avenue to St. Edward Church for Mass and return to the pavilion by 2 p.m.

Some roads will be closed during to the parades. From 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, the eastbound lanes of Thornton Avenue from Cherry to Arden streets and the northbound lanes of Cherry from Plummer Avenue to Thornton will be closed.

The eastbound lanes of Thornton from Cherry Street to St. Edward's Church will be closed from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.

For traffic information, tune in to 1610-AM radio or call Newark police at (510) 790-7237.

The Holy Ghost Festival is at 11:30 a.m. Saturday and 9:30 a.m. Sunday at the Newark Pavilion, 6430 Thornton Ave. The festival is free.

Staff writer Angela Woodall covers Newark and Ohlone College. She can be reached at (510) 353-7004 or at awood

all@angnewspapers.com.