Festa Italiana in New Kensington set to celebrate 43rd year

Nancy Brock doesn’t think there will be any problem with a shortage of food for this year’s Mount St. Peter Church Festa Italiana.

They’ll have more than 3,400 meatballs, 40 trays of lasagna and plenty of spaghetti, pizza and polenta, said Brock, who is in charge of food preparation for the 43rd year of the festival Aug. 2 and 3 in New Kensington.

“The people look forward to our homemade food, especially the lasagna, and have come from all over the region, not just the Allegheny Valley,” said Brock, who is in her 25th year of volunteering for the festival.

Almost all of the food for the event is prepared on-site leading up to the festival. It is cooked on festival days by volunteers, most of whom are retired. Most of the ingredients for the event have been provided by Golden Dawn, Restaurant Depot and Nappies Food Service.

The only food not prepared on-site at the church are the desserts for the bake sale and the gelato, which is fairly new to the festival and prepared by Butterfat Gelato in Pittsburgh.

“It draws people to the community. I’ll see people that I went to grade school with that no longer live down there,” said Lauren Brock, owner of Butterfat Gelato, who has been attending the festival since she was a child.

This year, bingo will be returning to the festival. It will be run by St. Joseph graduate Nicholas Brown, who has been attending Mount St. Peter Church since he was a child and has always enjoyed the festival.

“The festa here at (Mount St. Peter) is always great because of the support of the community,” he said. “People just love it, no matter what the weather is. Rain or shine, the turnout is always fantastic.”

Brown also is not an amateur when it comes to bingo, as he has hosted bingo at St. Joseph’s music festival and the Guardian Angels festival in Harrison.

“I think bingo is a wonderful activity just to get out and about, and it is really good for festivals, given you sit there, you call numbers, you play bingo and you can make some money,” he said.

Bingo is not the only activity on tap at the Festa Italiana, as the festival will include pig races, basketball, and Texas Hold’em.

Every year, the festival has a massive basket raffle with up to 70 baskets donated to the church. This year, the basket raffle will be held online, a process that has been continued since the pandemic years.

Music will include VZH&M from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday and the 56 East Band from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

“It’s always a great turnout. I believe that it is one of the things that the community actually looks forward to,” said Jim Caporali, a member of 56 East Band.