by Rex Rutkoski

At the first Vandergrift Italian Festival in 2004, the Rev. Anthony Bosco compared ethnic heritage in America to a good minestrone. "So many different ingredients — Italian (pasta), Polish (carrots), Lithuanian (celery), German (broth) — brought together to make a wonderful dish, each uniquely a different piece adding something to the meal," said the late retired bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg.

But we don't want to put the ingredients in a blender, Bosco said. "We don't want to destroy the individual identity of the components of the minestrone, or of the ethnic components of our nation."

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Source: http://triblive.com/