WILMINGTON -- Gray clouds and a light rain didn't stop hundreds from participating in and watching the Festa Patronale, or Feast Day Procession, on Sunday, the final day of the weeklong St. Anthony's Italian Festival.

Crowds gathered around St. Anthony of Padua church in the city's Little Italy neighborhood and watched as their relatives, neighbors and classmates paraded statues of the saints around the block.

"This year was great," said Jim DelGrosso, festival chairman, as the procession was ending and the saints were being brought back into the church. "Tomorrow we'll begin wrapping everything up, putting stuff away, and then we'll get ready for next year."

The end of the 36th annual festival, which included games, rides and food, also included bocce tournaments and a special appearance by a group of Philadelphia Mummers on Sunday evening. All money raised from the festival helps to run the parish school. The festival started June 6, but the procession was what many waited for.

"I came all the way from Virginia just for this," said Christine Myers, as she stood at the corner of Ninth and Du Pont streets with her sister, Renee Boyle. The sisters, whose maiden name is DiSabatino, hugged old neighbors from their time living on Howland Street and waved to familiar faces.

"Those look like the same saints that they had when we went to school here," Boyle said to Myers.

"I think so. They look like they painted them," Myers said.

"They wrap them up afterwards," Boyle said.

The sisters, who went to school at St. Anthony's, said coming to the festival every year made them feel special to be a part of the tradition.

They weren't alone in their thinking.

"This is a family thing for us. My whole family is a part of this from the school, as parishioners and the procession," said Lina Stella, as she stood with her sister, Clelia Malvestito, and Malvestito's daughter Laura and grandson Vinny.

Stella and Malvestito cheered family members as they walked along Scott Street with various groups. They gave money for roses from St. Rita and blessed bread from St. Anthony.

"They say if you eat this bread, it will help you lose 10 pounds," Stella joked. "If that's true, I might eat all of it."

One face missing from the crowd this year was Vice President Joe Biden, who is on a tour of Africa.

Last year, Biden brought a team of Secret Service men with him and commanded the eyes of all as he walked and talked with residents in the area and even kissed some people.

"I think this might be the first year in all the years I have been coming here that he wasn't here," Laura Malvestito said.

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100614/NEWS/6140313/Saints-give-feast-its-final-flourish