Family, faith at heart of feast

St. Mary’s celebrates heritage, community

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For five straight nights last week, people of all ages gathered in the Knightsville section of Cranston for food, fun and faire.

The event – which occurs every year in the month of July, and attracts people from all over the state, country and beyond – is known as Saint Mary’s Feast. While many of those who attend the traditional Italian American celebration have come to know the gathering for its fabulous food, exciting carnival attractions, live music shows and breathtaking fireworks display, there is much more to the event. Just ask the men and women who coordinate the festivities.

Christopher Edward Buonanno, secretary for the St. Mary’s Feast Society, said preparing for the feast “is quite an undertaking,” but the team, as in years past, worked “very hard so that the job could get done.”

The feast society currently has more than 500 members, but Buonanno said less than half of that are directly involved in feast planning. Those who do help out share in the duties of decorating the Knightsville section of town with the Italian flags that line the roadways, asking the city to help with strip painting the roadways, securing permits, lining up entertainment for the venue, designing the feast grounds, coordinating services with the church, recruiting sponsors, hiring security and fundraising throughout the year.

The fireworks display alone, according to members of the society, cost in excess of $8,000. The feast as a whole, they said, costs upwards of $50,000 to operate.

“This is not a fundraiser for us,” Buonanno said. “We actually have to fundraise all year just to be able to afford to do it. At the end of things we basically just break even after we pay for the police, the fire, the permits, the bands. It all adds up pretty quickly. But it’s not about the money for us – that is not why we do this.”

According to Buonanno and other members of the society, the feast, to many of the attendees, is much more than just a festival – it is a celebration of generations past, a tribute to tradition, an annual reunion of Italian heritage, life and love.

Lifelong Cranston resident Matthew Volpi is the current vice president for the St. Mary’s Feast Society. He said that the feast is an annual family tradition that he embraces, and he is already trying to instill his devotion to the family rite of passage in his own 4-year-old son, Matthew Jr.

“It’s not just about the carnival, or the food – it’s the whole package,” Volpi said. “It’s in our blood, it’s this neighborhood, it’s our families. This goes back for generations.”

Volpi and other executive members of the St. Mary’s Feast said the neighborhood in and around St. Mary’s Church is predominately made up of descendants from the original Italian immigrants from the Itri section of Italy. There is a deep-rooted religious aspect to the festivities that dates back centuries and is preserved by those in the neighborhood.

“Sure, a lot of people come to the feast and think of it as a carnival, but for us, it’s religious,” Volpi said. “The Mass at the church, the candlelight vigil, it’s not just what happens at the feast grounds. For me, this is more than Christmas.”

Thomas DeSio, a trustee for the St. Mary’s Feast Society who also has served as the grand marshal for the feast for the past 18 years, said he agrees with Volpi. He said the “old timers” have taught the younger generations the traditional ways of the feast, and that it is their duty to carry these traditions on. He said it was Buonanno’s grandfather who taught him to tie the knot in the rope to hang the flags that are mounted in Knightsville prior to the festival.

“The members of our society are a family,” DeSio said. “It’s a complex family where somewhere down the line, we are all related. He’s my cousin, he’s my cousin – we all have strong roots in this neighborhood and we all have a common goal, and that is this weekend.”

Buonanno said that there is a lengthy story about the religious ties to the event that involve a likeness of the “blessed mother” that washed up on the shore in Itri, Italy. It was found by a “deaf, mute” boy who miraculously developed the ability to hear and speak after his discovery.

This statue, Buonanno said, was preserved and protected in some sort of observatory. St. Mary’s has a replica of the statue, which serves as the focal point to the feast.

The statue, Buonanno said, is hauled out of the church on Friday afternoon and then carried by a team of parishioners through the streets from the church down the center of the city toward the society, where she is honored before the team carries her safely back to the church.

This aspect of the feast, known as the candlelight vigil, has become an annual tradition on Friday evening and was created by one of the society’s trustees. That, Buonanno said, is how things with the feast happen.

“The feast is always evolving and we are always trying to make it better,” Buonanno said. “We meet throughout the year as members and talk about how things went, what new ideas members have and how the feast can be improved. We are always working at it.”

This year, on Wednesday, the first night of the feast, it was a washout, but that did not dampen the spirit of the feast enthusiasts. Festivities throughout the rest of the five-day festival went off without a hitch, according to Buonanno, and he said he is already looking forward to begin preparations for next year’s event as fundraising events are already being prepared.

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