Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
As they have for 105 years, the members of the San Rocco di Simbario Society will embark on a five-and-a half-hour procession through the streets of Chicago’s Chinatown to honor the patron saint of their ancestral hometown. In the process, they’ll be celebrating their Catholic faith and maintaining a tradition now entering its fifth generation.
“It’s based on devotion, it’s religious, spiritual and it’s about family,” says Frank Bertucci, the society’s treasurer. “My daughter told me, as we walk through the streets of the old neighborhood, it’s like a walking family reunion. We see people we’re related to and even if we’re not related, our families have known each other for three or four generations.”
Festivities begin with Mass at 10:30 a.m. on Aug. 17 at St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta Parish followed by the procession through the old Italian neighborhood. The winding route is the same one first taken by Bertucci’s paternal grandfather, Bruno Bertucci, in 1920 after he was miraculously cured from a grievous injury.
Bertucci says his grandfather delivered ice to customers in his neighborhood, a tough job that involved lugging a cart with a huge slab of ice that he would cut down to size with a pickaxe. He would occasionally cut his legs with the ice pick and one day found himself in the hospital with a nasty infection.
“They were going to amputate one of his legs,” Bertucci says. “He prayed that if he could walk out of the hospital he would create a society to honor San Rocco, the patron saint of his family’s hometown in Simbario, Italy.”
Before the surgery, the infection was cured “through his faith and to the amazement of his doctors,” Bertucci says. Soon afterward, Bruno began his mission to honor the saint. He and his brother-in-law, Bruno Roti Sr., went house to house, rallying the paesani of Simbario to the cause. Around 120 Simbariani answered the call and were part of the first procession. The first statue of San Rocco carried through the streets by the society was made of chalk. In the 1930s, a new statue was commissioned and is still used to this day.
Bertucci says the route hasn’t changed much since 1920.
“We hold tight to our traditions,” Bertucci says. “We want to walk the same steps our forefathers stepped.”
He remembers walking the route as a child and being dazzled by the music of the marching bands, the explosions of fireworks and the beauty of the church.
“In order to be a member of the society, you have to be an adult male and a direct descendant of our hometown,” Bertucci says. “I and my brother couldn’t wait until we turned 18 years old.”
When asked why he has stuck with the society all these years, he quipped “They did a blood test on me and they found out it’s in my blood!”
Bruno Caruso, the society’s president since 2002, and the other leaders of the society strive to keep the legacy of their forebears alive, the faith in the Catholic Church vibrant and the devotion to their patron saint thriving, according to Bertucci.
“Bruno provides leadership, inspiration, and discipline to our society, to the membership, and the community,” Bertucci says
At each year’s Mass, Bertucci shares the story of San Rocco, the patron saint of Simbario. He says Rocco was born into wealth but forsook it to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Battling the Black Death from his native France to Italy and leaving a trail of miracles in his wake, he eventually contracted the disease, retiring to a forest to meet his maker only to be saved through divine intervention. Upon his recovery, he returned anonymously to France, where he was mistakenly incarcerated as a spy. Refusing to divulge his true identity, Rocco perished in his prison cell five years later, at which point his name and holy nature were revealed.
Bertucci is proud that the festa has been going strong after so many years. He says the number of people in the procession has grown over the years because the younger generations want to be involved.
“I think it’s a matter of how we raise our families, we’re somehow able to instill our values, the values we’ve gotten from fathers and grandfathers, to impart them to our children.
“We have more younger members than older,” he notes. “The only thing new about the procession each year are the new members of our families and of the community who join us.”
