Camp Washington Church Cancels 115-Year Ravioli Dinner After Storm Wipes Out Freezers

Sacred Heart Church in Camp Washington has canceled its October 11 ravioli dinner, a fundraiser that traces back to 1911, after a power outage tied to mid-August's severe storms spoiled months of handmade food. The Sacred Heart Ravioli Dinner Committee announced the cancellation in a Facebook post, saying it discovered the outage too late to save the inventory stored in the building where the ravioli was frozen.

The spoiled stockpile included 15,000 ravioli, 70 gallons of sauce, and about 500 meatballs, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Ravioli dinner event co-chair Ron Panioto told the paper the power outage at the building lasted four or five days, more than enough time to ruin the frozen product before it could be used. Severe weather swept through the region in mid-August, triggering tornado sirens and leaving more than 170,000 people without power, per the same report.

That storm has since been classified by the National Weather Service as a rare derecho, a designation that helps explain why the outage was so severe and long-lasting. According to Axios, the storm system knocked out power to more than 274,000 Duke Energy customers across Greater Cincinnati, prompting the utility to deploy more than 2,000 workers over five days to restore electricity.

A Fall Comeback Attempt Cut Short

This fall's dinner was meant to mark the committee's first sit-down attempt since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Enquirer reports. For the past six years, the fundraiser had only offered frozen meals for carry-out. At its peak, the event drew roughly 2,000 dine-in guests and 3,000 carryout patrons, according to Cincinnati Magazine, with volunteers once producing around 210,000 ravioli, 23,000 meatballs, and 600 gallons of sauce in a single run.

The dinner normally draws about 100 volunteers who together make upwards of 250,000 ravioli, per the Enquirer's reporting, and typically serves 3,000 sit-down dinners twice a year. The tradition brings together both Italian and German volunteers, a pairing rooted in the church's own history: the building at 2733 Massachusetts Ave. was built in 1889 by a German Catholic parish before merging in 1970 with Cincinnati's original Italian Sacred Heart parish, founded in 1890 on Broadway. Sacred Heart also serves as the meeting place for the Cincinnatus Lodge of the Order Sons & Daughters of Italy in America, whose members help prepare food and organize parish cultural events, the article notes.

Refunds Promised, Volunteer Ranks Thinning

The committee has promised that all fundraiser refunds will be issued within five to seven days. Panioto said losing the food felt sad because proceeds from the dinner directly benefit Sacred Heart Church, and he noted that some Cincinnati churches are being phased out, adding that the committee is trying to keep Sacred Heart going.

That concern echoes a broader trend across Greater Cincinnati's Catholic parishes. Under the Archdiocese of Cincinnati's Beacons of Light strategic plan launched in 2022, 208 parishes across 19 Ohio counties were consolidated into 57 Families of Parishes to address priest shortages and declining attendance. Cincinnati Magazine has also reported that declining volunteer turnout for Sacred Heart's ravioli dinner is partly tied to third- and fourth-generation Italian American families moving away from the city's urban core, a shift food historian Dann Woellert has linked to broader suburban migration patterns.

Pastoral care of Sacred Heart falls to priests of the Cincinnati Oratory, a religious community of St. Philip Neri that was canonically established in 2017, which also oversees Old St. Mary's in Over-the-Rhine. The ravioli, meatballs, and sauce served at Sacred Heart are made from Northern Italian recipes brought to Cincinnati by early 20th-century immigrants, a heritage volunteers have worked to preserve even as participation has thinned. When the fundraiser resumed after the pandemic in April 2022, a 40-volunteer team still managed to produce 1,600 carry-out boxes containing 80,000 ravioli, 12,000 meatballs, and 1,200 quarts of frozen sauce.

Looking Ahead to Palm Sunday

Despite the setback, the committee says it plans to return for Palm Sunday in 2027 and looks forward to welcoming supporters back for another ravioli dinner. Whether the group can rebuild its inventory and volunteer base in time remains an open question, one that mirrors the challenges facing other century-old parish traditions as Cincinnati's urban Catholic community continues to change.