Galego and Cabano, two dark-haired oxen, pulled the sacred image of Our Lady of Remedies on a procession float for greater than two hours through this small town in Portugal’s wine country.
They remained unperturbed even when two cannons fired salutes on the procession’s end, but their owner, a neighborhood farmer, beamed with pride.
“I really like to work with animals, and I actually have a whole lot of faith in Nossa Senhora dos Remédios,” said Antonio Faustino, who guided the large animals within the celebration of this particular image of the Virgin Mary, venerated here for the reason that 1500s. “There isn’t any word to clarify the emotion.”
Lamego’s festival, nicknamed “Portugal’s pilgrimage,” is considered one of the oldest and largest of the many spiritual feasts that throughout summer draw tens of 1000’s of individuals to hamlets and metropolises. They remain popular on this rapidly secularizing country, where the Catholic Church has been reckoning this 12 months with a long-ignored clergy sexual abuse scandal that Pope Francis addressed when he marked World Youth Day last month in Lisbon.
The Maronesa oxen pairs, and a number of other others pulling floats through Lamego’s steep cobblestone streets past several churches – some dating back to the Middle Ages – make this festival rare. Typically, it’s the faithful who carry the varied likenesses of Mary in similar festivals the world over.
It suits the agricultural traditions of the Douro River Valley, where vineyards produce port wine. In early September, the grape harvest is in full swing, predominantly done by hand on the narrow, terraced hillsides.
A century ago, the Vatican formally granted special permission for animals to tug the floats with life-sized statues of the Virgin Mary, said the Rev. Fernando Albano Cardoso, who for 40 years has organized the festivities.
As agriculture becomes more mechanized, nonetheless, it’s difficult to seek out farmers like Faustino, who has brought his oxen to Our Lady for 10 years and plans to proceed doing so.
Another unusual aspect of the procession is the enduring century-old sacred image standing on the bow of a boat-shaped float – the Virgin Mary breastfeeding infant Jesus.
“It’s the nicest moment for a girl, to nurture a toddler,” said Albano. The priest said the statue symbolizes the motherly look after all faithful by Our Lady of Remedies, whose statue is generally venerated in a sanctuary nearly 700 steps up a stone stairway ascending the town’s highest hill.
Last Friday, people two or three deep lined the procession route, many having staked out a spot with folded stools the night before. More observed from festively draped windows.
They watched in silence because the oxen pulled the five floats. Proceeding with them were solemn marching bands, the bishop and native clergy carrying a sacred relic, and about 200 faithful in historical or Biblical dress.
At least 50 were women wearing pink and blue just like the Virgin statue, carrying Jesus dolls or real babies. Among them was Julieta Pereira, who has lived in Switzerland for greater than 30 years but got here back to her native Lamego to participate within the procession as a vow to Mary for healing her from complex heart and knee operations.
“It will likely be hard, but we stop loads, so I’ll get little rests,” Pereira said, adding that as a toddler she used to ride on the floats, as several children did this 12 months.
Filipe Mendonça brought his two children to observe the procession, as he has done since his childhood.
“It’s a family tradition that I would like to transmit,” he said. Even though he’s not an everyday churchgoer, the feast matters as a family and community moment.
That combination of religion and native traditions helps the Catholic Church remain a crucial institution in contemporary Portugal, where 80% of residents describe themselves as Catholic, based on Alfredo Teixeira, a theology professor on the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon.
Traditional religiosity developed in relationship with the social structures of a farming society, he added, in order that Christian worship merged with reverence for “the God of our land.”
But for all of the timeless quality of the Lamego procession, there are also poignant contemporary reminders.
Along the route, people applauded when greater than a dozen firefighters marched in step, their golden helmets and silver axes gleaming within the sun. It signified how vulnerable locals feel to increasingly destructive wildfires raging during extreme heat waves.
One of this 12 months’s floats represented Our Lady of Peace, her statue framed by flags of conflict-ridden countries like Ukraine and Libya. A unit of the Portuguese Army’s special forces – wearing green fatigues, red bandannas and white gloves – helped carry the floats from the assembly point into the streets, where they were hitched to the oxen.
A contingent marched alongside the fundamental Our Lady of Remedies float, and gingerly loaded her statue on a military jeep to hold her home to the sanctuary after the procession ended on the special operations headquarters on the identical hillside, next to a granite Sixteenth-century convent.
“The religious component is an intrinsic a part of the community,” said Lamego’s mayor, Francisco Lopes, who marched alongside civil and military authorities. That makes preserving the tradition a priority at the same time as town grows more multicultural, he added.
The festivities – which apart from the Sept. 8 procession also include greater than two weeks of markets, fairs and concert events – give a needed boost to the local economy. While most villages in Portugal’s interior are slowly depopulating, even former residents come back for these feasts.
Jennifer Esteves got here from Germany together with her two girls, ages 1 and 4, to go to the sanctuary alongside her mother and grandmother, who first brought her here to hope when she was 6.
She arrived too late to enter the packed church for the Friday morning Mass, but she loved seeing the group.
“Many people have faith, especially on this Virgin,” she said after reciting a prayer inside. “When we visit Portugal, we at all times come.”
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely accountable for this content.
