June 30, 2012 – The 85th St. Peter's Fiesta, the nation's longest continuous religious festival and a rough-cut antipasto mixing sports, devotion, reunions, traditions and games at the original border of Gloucester with its Sicilian enclave, got its official kickoff in a picture-perfect dusk Friday night.
Mayor Carolyn Kirk welcomed the crowd at St. Peter's Park with prepared words that characterized the fiesta as dedicated with the "deepest respect for the fishermen."
Throughout the large crowd that followed the parade of the statute of St. Peter from the St. Peter's Club around the waterfront and back by members of the club was the same sense of history — that this Fiesta was of, by and for the fishermen.
Retired and active commercial fishermen Vito Calomo and Bill Muniz agreed that the event has been sustained by the "beliefs of the fishermen. "
"That's what they believe in through hard times," they said.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.