About 1000 people packed St Luke’s Catholic Church at Lalor to commemorate the life and death of Italian saint Padre Pio at the weekend.
The suburb’s large Italian community gathered first for a mass and then followed a huge golden statue of the saint around St Luke’s Primary School’s grounds. It was the fourth time La Festa di San Padre Pio has been held in Lalor.
The festival began when Bundoora couple Biagio and Carmela Patti commissioned a statue of the saint from an artist in Padre Pio’s home town of San Giovanni Rotondo in southern Italy.
The couple shipped the statue back in 2000 and gifted it to St Luke’s Church, where it now has pride of place in a shrine off the main nave.
The Patti family moved from Sicily to Bundoora in 1959 “for a better life”.
Mr Patti is a Lalor-based shoemaker.
Parish priest Luigi Sabbadin said the festival provided an important connection to their homeland for people who migrated here after WWII.
“This saint … tells you these people are connected to their faith and where they were born.”
