Each June, for more than 60 years, dozens of Italian Americans on Galveston Island in Texas have gathered at Sacred Heart Catholic Church of Holy Family Parish in Galveston to honor the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. The annual event carries on a Sicilian tradition of honoring St. John the Baptist for his intercession during a storm that endangered the Sicilian fishing village of Aci Trezza. The villagers were spared.

The survivors promised to honor the saint in thanksgiving for their miraculous survival with a celebration. The Galveston events were inspired by this Sicilian tradition that proclaims every year in faith and in Italian, “Viva San Giovanni!”