Italian festival breaks bread just to keep up

“Breaking bread” wasn’t an antiquated phrase during Festa Italiana’s Catholic Mass over the weekend.

It was necessity.

An inaugural gathering of Minnesota’s Italians had 1,000 wafers on hand for Communion on St. Paul’s Harriet Island on Saturday, but midway through, wafers were disappearing quicker than the faithful could line up to take them.

“They started breaking wafers into smaller and smaller pieces,” said Linda DeRoode, festival director. “They decided they might run out, but everyone got one.”

The tally of about 1,200 Italian Catholics who participated in Communion was one of many measures of how Festa Italiana beat expectations. The free Friday and Saturday celebration of Italian heritage and culture also sold out of 400 T-shirts and ran out of coffee, and some restaurateurs were hustling back to their establishments for more food, DeRoode said.

“It was a great response, much more than anticipated,” said John-Paul Albanese, general manager of Pazzaluna Urban Italian in St. Paul. Pazzaluna sold 700 pieces of lasagna and 400 servings of tiramisu, Albanese said.

With a new event, organizers were unsure of how to prepare for unknown demand.

They expected 5,000 to 6,000 people to attend each day. But an estimated 20,000 showed up, according to police counts and tallies of cups used, DeRoode said.

“We heard across the board that it was successful,” DeRoode said.

For Mass, Greg Pariana ordered one box of 1,000 wafers in an effort to top

the 800 used at the Irish Fair’s Mass in August, while making back-up plans for the leftovers.

“I was told to make sure that any left over needed to go to a church,” Pariana said. “I arranged that.”

But there was no need.

“We beat the Irish!” DeRoode said. “But seriously, we are humbled that people came out.”