The 97th St. Peter's Italian Bazaar draws hundreds

With Italian flags waving overhead, hundreds filled Federal Street, outside St. Peter Church in Portland, on August 11 and 12 for the St. Peter’s Italian Bazaar.

Now in its 97th year, the festival is a celebration of the church’s Italian heritage as well as the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Feast of St. Rocco. It is a beloved tradition that brings people back year after year.

“I just love the whole feeling of the gathering,” said Marie Ciccarone of Standish, who said she has been coming to the festival forever. “I love meeting up with my cousins whom I see maybe once a year.”

“It’s really to be with friends and family. It’s almost like a reunion every year,” said Rocco Ferrante, who has been attending St. Peter Church since his family moved to Portland from Italy when he was a young boy. “It’s no longer a neighborhood church because many people have moved away and live in other parts of the city or other parts of the state, but this particular weekend, they always return, and it’s great to get together.”

There is plenty to love about the St. Peter’s Italian Bazaar, whether it’s the balloons and bounce house for kids or the old-fashioned carnival games and live music for adults. And, of course, there is one big draw that extends across all age groups.

“We came for the food!” said Jackie Bell of Portland.

It’s no surprise that the food pulls people in, considering the Italian specialties that are available there.

“We’ve got pasta and meatballs, pasta with sausage, and chicken parmesan with ziti. We’ve got pasta fagioli with meatballs. We have meatball sandwiches. We have sausage, peppers, and onions. We have chicken parmesan sandwiches, and then we have a lot of extras,” said Dominic Reali, a longtime volunteer.

There is also homemade pizza and, for dessert, lots of homemade Italian pastries, including tiramisu, cannoli, and lots of cookies. Volunteers baked 12,000 Italian cookies in the days leading up to the bazaar.

“I just love the cookies!” said Ciccarone, who said she bought some Friday and then came back for more on Saturday.

“My favorite part is the dessert. I love the homemade Italian desserts,” said Julia Smith, whose family is visiting from Connecticut. “The festival is fun. It’s welcoming and very lively. We’re having a good time.”

“We’re staying right down the road, and we saw all the Italian flags, and we and my mom are Italian, so we followed the flags,” said Marissa Smith, Julia’s sister. “I think it’s great. We came out of the church, and everybody was super welcoming and really nice, and it was nice to have it open with the Italian. It just felt really good because we don’t have that at the church we have back home.”

That opening greeting in Italian came from Bishop Robert Deeley, who celebrated Mass at St. Peter Church to kick off the Saturday celebration. The bishop speaks Italian, having spent seven years serving at the Vatican.

In his homily, the bishop noted some of the great food available at the festival, but he said what really brings people together is the enjoyment of being part of a community.

“The festival reminds us of those who worked to establish this parish and the effort they made to make sure that it would continue to gather the Italian families of this neighborhood together in faith and heritage and family. These are the ties that gather us. These are the ties that give meaning to life. These are the ties that show us how to live together,” the bishop said. “As we gather today to start the second day of the festival, we come together in prayer so that we might remind ourselves of who we are: a family gathered in faith. We might thank God for his kindness to us, and we might seek God’s will for us.”

The bishop said the festival should serve as a reminder of the responsibility of passing on our faith, just as we pass on the recipe for our famous cookies or the key to perfecting a sausage sandwich.

“The festival began some 97 years ago to strengthen the parish of St. Peter’s. Those who began it sought to serve those around them and help them to have a community that would worship together and celebrate faith and family together. They wanted to make a better world together. In God’s grace, may that still be the reason for the festival. And may Blessed Mary, our Mother, under the title of her glorious assumption, intercede for us,” the bishop said.

Following the Mass at the church, statues of the Blessed Mother and St. Rocco were carried in procession through the festival, up to Congress Street, and then around the block, returning to Federal Street. Parishioners and priests sang as they processed.

It takes dozens of volunteers to make the St. Peter’s Italian Bazaar such as success, and many, like Ferrante and Reali, have been helping out for a decade or more.

“St. Peter’s has been here for a long, long time, and it was mainly supported by the Italian people in the early stages, and now we get to help,” said Reali, who estimates he’s been volunteering for at least 15 years. “I’ve been going to this church for 65 years, and it’s for a good cause.”

“I’ve probably been volunteering since I was maybe 10 or 11 years old, and now I just hit 60. It’s been a lot of years,” said Ferrante. “It’s great to get together to volunteer and just be part of helping the church stay the way it is, to keep the church alive and to honor family and our forefathers who started it years and years and years ago.”

Like the bishop, Ferrante said it is the people who make the festival.

“The best parts are the people and the volunteering,” he said. “We want to say the best part is the food, and the food is a great part of it, but it’s actually just being together with everybody and enjoying the good time. It’s a lot of hard work, but there are a lot of hands doing it, and it makes it a fun time.”

The festival is a fundraiser for St. Peter Parish, which was established in 1911 to serve Italian immigrants.