Dish gets deeper in story of pizza-pan apparition

It looks like the story of Our Lady of the Pizza Pan isn't turning out like we expected. Over the weekend, the Chronicle reported that officials at Pugh Elementary — where cafeteria worker Guadalupe Rodriguez discovered the silhouette of the Virgin Mary on a pizza pan on Ash Wednesday — worked out a deal so Rodriguez could keep the pan. But today, when Rodriguez was supposed to pick up the pan, HISD ordered that it be returned to the school.

It seems the conflict between the school cafeteria, which wanted the pizza pan returned to Pugh, and the PTA, which was displaying it on a makeshift altar in a member's yard, led to Monday's decision. HISD reportedly called and ordered the tray returned to the school, so a group paraded it through the streets, singing and carrying roses — and now the pan is under lock and key in a school office. The problem: No one can see it. "They already locked it up in the office and they were asking, 'Can we see it again?'" parent Fabiola Salinas told KTRK. "They were told no. So that is my concern."

As Channel 13 points out, the tray is HISD property, but it seems the district could easily buy another pan for a few bucks. District officials wouldn't talk on-camera to KTRK, so we're guessing it's something more sensitive — perhaps the idea that giving the pan to Rodriguez, who plans to display it on an altar she'll create, would imply that HISD is acknowledging the Marian apparition is real? Should be interesting to find out.

Update: HISD spokesman Terry Abbott e-mailed to say that the school district can't legally give away public property, which is the reason behind asking that the pan be returned to the school. "On the very day the apparition was discovered, HISD officials took the baking sheet to a local church for review, and then loaned it immediately to an area resident so that anyone and everyone who wanted to see it could do so. The baking sheet stayed in that home for five days," Abbott said. "But ... we don't have the authority to give it away. So it has been brought back to the school, after that five-day viewing period, and HISD is working on a more permanent arrangement for the public to view it."