NEW YORK -- A 78-year-old widower and former president of Brooklyn College was ordained as a Catholic priest Saturday in a ceremony at St. James Cathedral.
Dr. Francis P. Kilcoyne, whose only son, Francis Jr., is a priest and the pastor of a Brooklyn parish, became the first man in the Brooklyn Diocese's 127-year history to become a priest without going throughseminary training.
Only a handful of men in the country have received such a waiver, which must come from the Vatican.
Bishop Francis J. Mugavero ordained Kilcoyne in a ceremony in which Kilcoyne's son participated.
Kilcoyne said he decided he wanted to join the priesthood when his wife of 40 years, Eleanor, died 15 months ago. He chose the feast St. Francis of Assisi, 'the humble saint,' on which to be ordained.
'I had thought about it from the time of my wife's death,' Kilcoyne said. 'I want to assist in the sacramental life of the church. I want to offer mass. That's the principal reason.'
He hopes to provide marriage counseling and visit the sick.
'As a married man for 40 years in a marriage that was ideally happy and fruitful, I think I can offer help to those in stable marriages as well as those in troubled unions,' he said.
On Sunday, Kilcoyne will celebrate his first mass at the church where he married his wife, Our Lady of Refuge. He will assume duties as a parish priest at the same church.
Kilcoyne left Brooklyn College in 1968. In May 1975, Mugavero appoined him as head of the 60-member Brooklyn Diocesan Pastoral Council. The group advises the bishop about the concerns of Catholics living in 225 parishes in Brooklyn and Queens.
