The crowds are thinner, the people older and the routes shorter, but the procession is an important cultural event that reaffirms not just faith, but ties to the old neighborhood and the old country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere really has been no Italian immigrant narrative written about Williamsburg,\u201d\u009d said Joseph Sciorra, a folklorist who has long studied Italian-American traditions. \u201cThey have been invisible. But a lot of the history can be tracked by its religious expression.<\/p>\n
\u201cProcessions map out networks of affiliations,\u201d\u009d he added, \u201cpeople who are devoted to a saint, or are from the same town. It maps out the connections in the community. As people move out and get replaced by new residents, the route gets truncated.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Devotees of St. Cono, who hail from Teggiano, Italy, first settled the area in the 1880s, establishing one of the many saint societies that exist to this day. After World War II, another society for St. Cono was formed by more recent immigrants; it sponsored this week\u2019s feast.<\/p>\n