Church festivals
Natalie Podkul
one of the chairs of the committee
SummerFest 2022 St. Thomas More Resurrection Church
June 20-25
Corner of Bethel Park and Upper St. Clair.
Every night except Saturday at 6 p.m. Saturday at 5 p.m.
It has gone on for a long time
Stoipped in 2020 for Covid. We brought it back last year and this year we expanded it and making it better than ever.
The fellowship of the community. We merged St. Thomas More and St. John Capistran into Resurrection parish and were were excited to bring back the parish life and the fellowship.
They came out in droves. It really showed how much people needed that kind of fellowship throughout the whole south hills.
We have our carnival rides that came back this year. We have inflatables giant slide and a wrecking ball that’s inflatable and a toddler zone that’s inflatable. We’ve actually expanded our footprint into a separate parking lot new food items new games.
Second year of being involved.
Co-Chair Anthony Lembo
94th annual St. Rita’s Parish Festival July 14, 15, 16
We actually modified our church festival to be a drive through. We were able to still serve it, pack it up, but together about 400 together a night to keep the tradition going.
Went to a more normal fair last year.
The only thing that has changed is we still package it in containers inside the facility and divvy them outside rather than just serving it. It’s easier. It allows us to adjust if there’s rain and put it back to a drive-through quicker.
The health concerns were not as high. Not as many people were getting sick, so we decided to go with it.
We had great attendance last year. We got rained out the last night, but the last night we did a drive-thru so we were still able to operate.
They’re great functions for the community and they’re good for family events. if you have good entertainment and good food you can have a great event.
Highlights the homemade Italian food. Our Christian mothers have been doing this for 94 years. All year long they make food ave it frozen when it comes fair time they start. Everything from the bun to the sauce to the pasta is homemade. People line up for that Our line for the cavatelli stretches through the parking lot. It can take a couple hours to get through some times.
Every year we have entertainment it has grown i think COVID may have been a little bit of a speed bump but we found a way to navigate through it to keep things going and continue to good things for their church. It’s grown our festival.
Cliff
We I think the people are anxious to get back out and have fun .
It’s about the same.
St. James Festival
Father Lynam
June 9-11
We had modified festivals, mainly food trucks during the shutdown when there was limitations placed on us.
We had it all outside this year. Typically, we have stuff inside but it was designed to have it outside. We were blessed with good weather.
Our parishioners are there. All of our masses are open. People are coming back to mass. We thought people wouldn’t be afraid of it. Crowds were good.
Thursday is always a little bit light. I’ve noticed that all of the years that I’ve been doing festivals. Thursday is the lightest night. Friday and Saturday were really packed.
Saturday we had some of the dancing groups the little kids that dance that always draws a lot of parents and grandparents who come to see the kids dancing. It was beyond our expectations in terms of the crowds.
The big thing for us the raffle. The more people we get to engage in that. Our parishioners are very, very supportive of the school. That’s the biggest income for us. We do a drawing every night. That’s one part of it.
We have the festival because we need to raise money, but also because we want to have hospitality for the community. We invite people in and get to know them. There’s a very, very important social dimension to these festivals that we treasure.
We were able to accomplish the financial support that we needed because of the raffle, but the social aspect of it was certainly depleted.
JFK Catholic School Festival.
held at St. James
John Lynam
Father John Skirtich
Aug. 10-13
It went on for a long time
St. Valentine’s festival
It became the festival for our new parish
We really emphasize that we’re one parish festival.
One 2020 no festival
We love the festival. Not only does it rake money for the parish, but more importantly it builds community. Every parish I’ve been to for the most part has had some sort of festival. It really does build and forge the bonds of community in a beautiful way. To me that’s the most important part of it.
We had good crowds last year had a lot of rain really impacted the festival.
We had good crowds when the weather was good, so we’re hoping and praying for good weather this year.
We were hurt financially during the pandemic in many ways. What it really hurt was the progress we wanted to make in forming one parish family out of four churches that are part of the parish. It’s a slow process but we feel like we’re making a lot of traction now with folks from all four of our individual churches really coming together in different ways and forging those bonds of community more and more all the time.
Our Lady of Hope Bethel Park, South Park and Whitehall
- Our Lady of Hope (Bethel Park/South Park/Whitehall), which brings together the parishes of Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin (Whitehall), Saint Germaine (Bethel Park), Nativity (South Park) and Saint Valentine (Bethel Park);