The faithful returned to Golf Mill Park in Niles over the Labor Day holiday for the 121st annual Feast of Maria SS Lauretana Festival, a Sicilian religious tradition dating back to the 1620s in Italy and to the year 1900 in the Chicago area. 

Although Friday, Sept. 3 and Saturday, Sept. 4 was a more traditional street festival with food, carnival rides, and live music, Sunday, Sept. 5, and one event Saturday night, were all about religious traditions dating back to the legend of a miracle in the 1620s. The story says in the early 1620s, a ship filled with heathen pirates was struggling off the coast of what is now Sicily.