More than food and fun, Milford parish festival brings people, cultures together

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

MILFORD – An international festival is one way that different ethnic groups in a multicultural parish are coming together.

“Travel the world – without a passport,” invited the Sunday bulletin of St. Mary of the Assumption Parish for the festival held on Saturday. The announcement showed flags and foods from the United States, Portugal, Guatemala, Brazil, Puerto Rico and Ecuador.

“It was a great event, nice to bring everyone together and celebrate the cultures we have in our town and try all the different cuisines,” commented Pamella DaSilva, a Brazilian. She said she thought the festival was better than last year, its first year, because more people came and there was a greater variety of food.

Brazilian Vanessa DaSilva Chamberlain said it was nice that all the different cultures were working together.

In the 1960s and 1970s there was a parish fair, recalled Judy Byron, a parishioner for decades.

“There wasn’t any festival” involving Hispanic culture, said Edna Diaz, who was born in Guatemala and came to St. Mary’s from Waltham 21 years ago. There was a Brazilian Festa Junina and a celebration of Our Lady of Fatima, whose apparitions were in Portugal.

Mrs. Diaz said the idea of starting another festival was not to make it just for Hispanics, but rather to have people from every culture share their culture and “have a fun day for everybody.” Parishioners donate and prepare the food, and proceeds from its sales are earmarked for the parish renovation.    

“Everybody liked to help,” she said. “We understand each other,” despite language differences.

Father Peter J. Joyce, pastor, credited Mrs. Diaz and her husband, Juan Diaz, with starting the festival, along with Zilka Fernandez.

“They wanted to bring people together,” he said. “They wanted it to be a family event. The first rule was: No liquor.” He said many parishioners who’ve struggled with addiction have turned their lives around, so festival organizers “wanted to give them a space where they could be safe and enjoy themselves.”

Lena Pires, who was born in Portugal, and has been at St. Mary’s since the late 1990s, said this year she worked in the parish kitchen, where American and Portuguese food was prepared. Outside there were Hispanics grilling and Brazilians frying food, she said.

There was also entertainment. A Portuguese young person played music on an accordion and people danced, Hispanics sang, and a DJ played tunes from different countries, Mrs. Pires said. Children’s activities included face painting, crafts and coloring religious pictures. Theme baskets parishioners put together were auctioned.

Mrs. Byron said the festival committee was composed of people from different ethnic groups; she was in charge of the English-speaking part last year, and helped this year.

“The first year we were very defined by our ethnic group and who was going to lead” that group, she said. This year they were more relaxed about leadership; “we knew what our skills were.”

Having different ethnic groups in one parish is sometimes “contentious,” she said. People complain when others do things differently or cause problems.

But she said, “I love the integration of communities. … All of us come from some ethnic group that moved here.”

Her great-grandparents immigrated from Ireland, and her grandmother told stories of the Irish finding it hard to get jobs and to be understood when they spoke heavily accented English. People today have these issues, but they don’t see that history repeats itself, Mrs. Byron said.

“I think it’s really interesting to see how other cultures solve problems and have the courage to come someplace that they think will be an easier life,” she said. It isn’t easier; “It takes awhile to fit in,” and they suffer criticism, she maintained. She wants to tell critics that newer immigrants “are as Catholic as you.”

Mrs. Byron said she thinks the festival will help increase people’s understanding of each other’s cultures, but gradually, since it’s held for only one day. Now, when “running into each other” somewhere, “we recognize each other and stop and talk.”

Some parishioners were already connected to people of other cultures.

Richard Coppinger, of Irish descent, said the parish had Anglos, Italians and Portuguese in the 1960s when he came.

In 1987 his daughter Deborah Castellanos and Francisco Castellanos, of Honduras, married there.

“I just wish everybody [in the world] could get along,” she said, adding that at St. Mary’s festival everybody does.

Father Joyce, 67, said Hispanics – almost all of them younger than he is – fill the church with 400 or more people for Spanish Mass. English Mass, by contrast, had few young attendees, although “that’s getting better” since COVID. The three Lord’s Day English Masses each draw 110-150 people, he said.

English-speaking parishioners Marion Mairs and Mary Castrucci raved about getting to know seminarians from South America who served at St. Mary’s.

“They called us Mom,” Mrs. Mairs said.

The women said they transported the seminarians to the parish for the weekends, visited them in seminary in Baltimore, and even joined others for Father Victor A. Sierra’s post-ordination celebrations in his native Colombia.

“We’re very lucky to have Father Peter,” Mrs. Mairs said of their present pastor. “He’s very kind to all the different … cultures. He’s a wonderful homilist” – in whatever language.

Mrs. Diaz noted that some people don’t go to church, and said she prays they’ll have the festival each year – to bring more people to Christ and the Church.She invited non-Catholic friends to the festival and also attends functions at their churches, she said.