Bloomfield’s Little Italy Days festival has been moved to 2021.

The four-day Italian festival was originally to be held in August. It was then moved to Oct. 8-11 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The event will, hopefully, go on in 2021, producer Sal Richetti said Wednesday. Dates are tentatively set for Aug. 19-22.

“It’s off,” he said. “I decided about a week ago that we are not going to be able to do it safely.”

A Columbus Day Parade scheduled for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 10 also has been canceled. As is custom, the day after the parade, the Madonna della Civita statue was to be carried from St. Maria Goretti Church in Bloomfield to a sister parish after the morning Italian Mass.

JoAnne Klimovich Harrop | Tribune-Review  

Richetti, who has been head of Little Italy Days for 10 years, said he has been monitoring the situation because of all the restrictions.

Richetti said he tried to create the correct spacing of vendors to accommodate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social distancing requirements. Liberty Avenue is usually packed with booth after booth of vendors selling gnocchi, stuffed shells, meatballs, sausage and more. Desserts of cannoli, homemade cookies and gelato are aplenty.

Richetti said since Gov. Tom Wolf hasn’t lifted the outdoor ban on the number of people, there was no way to control the number of attendees. He said he has talked to some of the vendors and some of the Bloomfield businesses who support the decision.

“It is what it is,” Richetti said. “It’s life. We just have to accept it and move on and shoot for next year and make next year bigger and better.”

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