Author: By Jennifer Medina, Globe Correspondent Date: 08/16/2001 Page: B5 Section: Metro/Region
Only a handful of their members are still fishermen. Almost none of their children speak Italian. Thousands of people from throughout Boston come to the festival simply for the pasta, fish, and cannolis.
But organizers of this weekend's Fisherman's Feast are mindful of the festival's origin: Madonna del Soccorso di Sciacca, the vision of the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of Sciacca, Sicily.
Boston's Madonna del Soccorso di Sciacca Society traces its roots to that tiny seaside town, where a sister festival draws 40,000.
"It's tradition," said Sal Diecidue, president of the group that sponsors the event. The Madonna "protects us the whole year and this is our way to pay tribute."
Tonight, the society's 100 members will lift the 1,200-pound statue of the Madonna and parade it through the North End. They will march the icon to the Columbus Park waterfront, blessing the waters in a ritual intended to help fishermen reap a bountiful harvest. On Sunday, a priest from Sacred Heart Church will hold an open-air Mass in Italian.
The annual Fisherman's Feast has been a fixture at Fleet, North, and Lewis streets for more than nine decades, the oldest continuous Italian festival in the city. When it began in 1910, the festival drew thousands but the focus was sacred: a request for Madonna's blessing of the city's commercial fleet and the Italian immigrants who toiled aboard.
However, assimilation and a changing economy led to fewer Italian-American seamen. Though a priest still blesses the waters, he now asks for protection of the community.
The festival has grown to include Italian food and visitors from across the region. "You grow up knowing that this will become a part of you," said Diecidue, gazing at pictures of the festival from the 1950s in the club's bar room.
The Rev. Vincenzo Rosato, who will bless the waters and say Mass on Sunday, said tradition may not be enough to maintain the festival's spiritual origins.
"They mix the sacred with the profane," Rosato said, referring to the band music played during the procession. "It's sometimes more of a social thing then religous."
Yet, as soon as the Madonna is taken to the altar, remember why they came, said Ralph Amoroso, 39. "We ask her to guard us, to guide us, for anything and she answers. I get goosebumps just thinking about it," he said.
Tradition has it that the Madonna del Soccorso di Sciacca, or Mother of Help, appeared to a monk in a dream and cured his fever. Her presence is also believed to have rescued from Satan a young child whose mother scolded him by saying, "Go to the devil!"
For Madonna Society members, full participation in the festival can mean joining in a round-the-clock vigil over the statue and helping to lift it so that it can be carried.But one of the most coveted tasks, the part of a flying angel, goes to a child.
When the statue returns to the chapel on Sunday, two girls dressed as angels recite a litany. A third girl is guided from a second-story window to the ground on a pulley, appearing as though she were flying.
This year's flying angel is Nicole Mustacchio, 11, of East Boston.
"You want to honor God wherever possible," she said. "This is the highest way you can honor God and it's cool to be the one who does that."