New Jersey Priest commits suicide; mourners include his Bishop

 New Jersey bishop mourns for priest who committed suicide

Father Rafael Ciro, pictured above, served in the Diocese of Paterson New Jersey. | Credit: Courtesy of Diocese of Paterson

By Walter Sánchez Silva

ACI Prensa Staff, Sep 2, 2025 / 14:53 pm

The bishop of Paterson, New Jersey, Kevin Sweeney, mourned the suicide of Father Rafael Ciro, a Colombian-born priest who served as pastor of St. Stephen's Church. The prelate said he is praying for him and asked for prayers, entrusting him to God's mercy.

In a statement Sweeney noted that the priest, born in 1979 in Colombia, had been "faithful, joyful, and dedicated" since his ordination on May 25, 2013.

The deceased priest served at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Paterson, St. Mary's in Passaic, St. Nicholas in Passaic, and Sacred Heart and Holy Rosary in Dover before being appointed pastor of St. Stephen's in Paterson.

Speaking to Univision, María Rodríguez said that Ciro "was a very good priest. He was very well-loved; he had many people who loved him, even though he is no longer with us. We miss him."

A priest ‘is not exempt from illness’

In his statement, the bishop pointed out that “A priest is a human being, and none of us is immune to illness. Though most of us realize that physical illness can be fatal, we may not always realize that the same is true of other illnesses.”

“Father Rafael fought the good fight in his struggles with mental illness with the support and care of friends, counselors, and brother priests,” he emphasized.

Sweeney also noted that "profound desperation that insidiously led a person of deep faith to this earthly conclusion is impossible to comprehend. Therefore, we lift Father Rafael and his grieving loved ones and colleagues up in prayer for the consolation that only God gives.”

A call to hope

“Shaken to the core by this tragedy, our faith in eternal life through Christ is our light in darkness,” the bishop affirmed.

“No one of us can – nor will we ever – have complete understanding of Father Rafael’s fears and struggles. We do know that he fought with courage to find equilibrium and tranquility that would allow him to live with the peaceful heart for which he longed. The long shadow of this moment does not diminish the bright light of his spirit,” he pointed out.

“Grant him, Lord, eternal rest, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace,” the prelate prayed.

Funeral services for Father Rafael Ciro

The wake for the priest was scheduled for Sept. 2 at St. Stephen's Parish. The funeral Mass will be celebrated on Wednesday, Sept. 3, at St. John the Baptist Cathedral, located at 387-389 Grand Street, Paterson. The Eucharist can be followed at this link.

A private funeral service will be held for the family in Colombia.

In the announcement regarding the funeral service, the Diocese of Paterson asked for continued prayers for Ciro, "his mother, Doña Elena Guarín, his siblings, the priests of Paterson, and his many friends."

Condolences may be sent to the Clergy Personnel Office, St. Paul Inside the Walls, 205 Madison Avenue, Madison, New Jersey 07940.

What does the Catholic Church say about suicide?

The Church's teaching on suicide is found in Nos. 2280-2283 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In his statement, the bishop quoted 2283 which says: "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”

Furthermore, although suicide "is contrary to love for the living God," the catechism also establishes in No. 2282 that "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide."

"With this certainty, we entrust Father Raphael to the infinite mercy of God, rich in compassion," the bishop of Paterson added.

Seek help

If you or someone you know is experiencing an emotional crisis or suicidal thoughts, remember that the Catholic Church offers spiritual guidance, prayer, and someone to talk to and encourages seeking professional help.

You can contact helplines, such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988 in the U.S.) for your country, or go to your parish, where you will find pastoral support and resources.

The Catholic Church teaches that life is a gift from God. The Church accompanies those who suffer with compassion and without judgment, offering hope, prayer, and consolation to the affected families.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Sadly, suicide claims the life of this important New Orleans Priest

 

‘THE COMMUNITY IS DEVASTATED’: NEW ORLEANS PRIEST TAKES HIS OWN LIFE

Fr Peter Weiss, SSJ, a pastor in New Orleans educator at St Augustine High School, has died at the age of 70. Multiple sources have confirmed that the priest took his own life.

The pastor of All Saints Catholic Church since 2014, Weiss recently celebrated 42 years as a priest in the Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (also known as the Josephites), the nation's only male religious community founded to serve African Americans.

He was found dead at the parish on Wednesday morning.

“The St. Augustine High School community is devastated by the news of the passing,” said campus minister Fr Rodney “Tony” Ricard in a statement released by the school that evening, and later reposted on the Josephites’ Facebook page.

“It is our collective prayer that through the Mercy of God, our beloved Fr. Weiss is now resting with God in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Weiss was a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana and the Washington Theological Union, and was ordained for the Josephites in 1979. He later served throughout the society’s geographical footprint, including in Alabama, Texas, Washington DC, and Louisiana. He was also formerly the Josephites’ vocations director.

Weiss first arrived at St Augustine High in 1991, joining the faculty of the historic Black Catholic school founded by the Josephites in 1951. Shortly thereafter, he also began his first stint as pastor of All Saints.

After a number of years away following Hurricane Katrina, he returned to the parish and school in 2014.

During his time at St Augustine, he taught theology and was also at one point director of the color guard for the Marching 100, the school’s historic student band. He was the group’s chaplain for more than 16 years prior to his death.

He began service as the school’s chief religious officer in August 2020, supervising the St Augustine campus ministry and serving as “the direct link” between the school and the Josephite society.

In that role, he also led the students’ annual trip north for a tour of the Underground Railroad, which in prior years also involved a culminating visit to Washington DC for the March for Life. This year’s trip was scheduled to occur in the coming weeks.

Outside of his church and school, Weiss maintained links with the local community as a chaplain for the New Orleans branch of the FBI, as well as the local police and fire departments.

The school is asking that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the school here.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available at 1-800-273-8255. For crisis support in Spanish, call 1-888-628-9454.

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Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger, a seminarian with the Josephites, and a ThM student with the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA).

Pope Francis tells doctors to do everything to combat suicide and euthanasia

Pope Francis meeting representatives of the Italian orders of surgeons and dentists.   (Vatican Media)

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• Pope Francis
• medicine & health
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Pope to doctors: reject temptation to assist and support suicide and euthanasia

In a meeting on Friday with representatives of Italy’s surgeons and dentists, Pope Francis spoke about encountering in their patients, persons who are unique in their dignity and fragility, and not just their illness.

By Robin Gomes

Pope Francis on Friday urged doctors to reject the temptation to assist and support suicide and euthanasia, reminding them of the Hippocratic oath that calls on them to commit themselves to absolute respect for human life and its sacredness.

“Medicine, by definition, is a service to human life, which involves an essential and indispensable reference to the person in his spiritual and material integrity, in his individual and social dimension.”  “Hence medicine is at the service of man, of the whole man, of every man,” Pope Francis told some 350 representatives of the National Federation of the Orders of Medical Surgeons and Dentists of Italy, whom he met on Friday in the Vatican.  

Vision of the human person 

He told them that illness is not a mere clinical fact restricted to medicine alone, but includes the condition of a person, the sick.  In this human vision, he said, doctors are called to relate to the patient, taking into consideration his singularity as a person who has an illness, and not just the case of the illness the patient has.

This is why, the Pope said, it is important that “the doctor does not lose sight of the uniqueness of each patient, with his dignity and his fragility”.  “A man or a woman should be accompanied with conscience, intelligence and heart, especially in the most serious situations.”

Suicide, euthanasia

“With this attitude,” the Pope said, “we can and must reject the temptation, also induced by legislative changes, to use medicine to support a possible willingness of the patient to die, providing assistance for suicide or directly causing death by euthanasia.”

The Pope said that these are hasty ways of dealing with choices that are not, as they might appear, an expression of the person's freedom, when they include getting rid of the patient as a possibility, or false compassion in the face of the request to be helped to anticipate death.

Sacredness of human life

In this regard, Pope Francis recalled the “New Charter for Health Care Workers” of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers that says: "There is no right to dispose arbitrarily of one's life, so no doctor can become an executive guardian of a non-existent right."

He also recalled his predecessor, Pope Saint John Paul II, who pointed to the intrinsic and indispensable ethical dimension of the health care profession of the Hippocratic oath, according to which “every doctor is asked to commit himself to absolute respect for human life and its sacredness".

Sadness in a community and high school across the lake from New Orleans; pray for our kids and talk to them; may they rest in peace

In 48 hours, 2 Mandeville High students take their own lives

(Kim Chatelain, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

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By Kim Chatelain, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune The Times-Picayune  
 
on April 21, 2016 

                        

Mandeville has been rocked this week with two students from the city's namesake high school killing themselves within 48 hours, befuddling the close-knit school community and prompting public officials to provide support for students and faculty. While the timing, method and proximity of the two deaths are alarming, investigators said they appear to be more of a coincidence than a case of copy-cat suicides.
Brenden Manley, 17 and a member of the Mandeville High swim team, died Monday (April 18). He drove his mother's car to a secluded area on Perrilloux Road near Madisonville and shot himself.
On Wednesday, Nathaniel Hassan posted a chilling video of himself on Instagram minutes before using a pistol to take his own life, in a wooded area off Louisiana 22 near Madisonville. Hassan began the brief video by saying, "Hey, so, I'm killing myself. Goodbye." He then said he could not live happily because "my morals are totally different from the world around me." Hassan had marked his 18^th birthday exactly a week earlier.
The St. Tammany Parish coroner, Dr. Charles Preston, said a preliminary investigation suggests the two deaths were "unrelated as opposed to cause and effect." He said Manley and Hassan were not known to run in the same social circles.
Preston, who has done extensive research on the unusually high suicide rate in St. Tammany, said both students appeared to be "pretty well accepted" in peer groups and had good family lives. And he said he does not think bullying played a role in their deaths.
The timing of the two deaths, and the public nature of Hassan's Instagram post, jolted western St. Tammany Parish barely a month after two other untimely deaths of teenagers:

• On March 11, 17-year-old Zachary Foret fell from a canoe into a pond near Covington and drowned
• Two days later, 17-year-old Alexander James Shelby, a student at St. Paul's School, died after he and a friend reportedly smoked Mojo. His death was attributed to "synthetic cannabinoid toxicity" and has been classified an accident. Jabari Pea of Covington, has been booked with second-degree murder for allegedly supplying the lethal dose of synthetic marijuana.

St. Tammany has historically had a high suicide rate in comparison to other Louisiana parishes, befuddling area local care workers and public officials. It has hovered between 15 and 17 suicides per 100,000 residents; the state and national averages have been around 12.

Hoping to erase stigma and save lives, St. Tammany Parish confronts suicide issue

St. Tammany has a high suicide rate compared to other parishes

Preston became so rattled by the record 47 suicides in 2014 that he launched an exhaustive analysis of each incident in hopes of finding common threads that might lead to answers. He said the study did not uncover an antidote, but reinforced the notion that combating it is a complex challenge that requires a concerted effort on many fronts.
Robby Fritscher, Manley's swim coach at Mandeville High, said he's never had to deal with such a difficult situation in his 30 years of coaching. He cancelled swim practice this week and instead held team meetings, so that his swimmers could discuss their feelings, talk with counselors and grieve.
"It's been a rough road," Fritscher said. "I'm just really in shock. It makes me want to do something, anything I can do, to make sure something like this never happens again. I'm going to make sure every swimmer of mine for the rest of my career absolutely understands how this has hurt so many people (who) loved him. This kind of stuff can't go on."
Fritscher described Manley as a good student who came from a close, loving family. He had two older brothers and because of that took on the responsibility of helping younger swimmers on the team.
"He had an uncanny ability to take care of the younger kids coming into the group," Fritscher said. "Those kids absolutely adored him."

Manley had just returned from his senior trip to Walt Disney World and was preparing to enter Loyola University and be a part of that school's fledgling swim program. Fritscher, who said he will give the eulogy at Manley's funeral this weekend, said he saw no indication that the student was facing difficulties. He said Manley had worked harder than ever on swimming over the past few months.

It's a very close school. The kids don't understand how this could happen.' - Rick Danielson.

Schools Superintendent W.L. "Trey" Folse III said a team of school system counselors and other professionals from the community were sent to Mandeville High on Thursday to help students and faculties cope.
"The St. Tammany Parish public school system community is deeply saddened by the loss of two Mandeville High students," Folse said. "Our deepest sympathy goes out to the family and friends of the students we lost as well as the entire Mandeville High community."
Mandeville City Councilman-at-large Rick Danielson, a Mandeville High graduate whose son is currently a junior at the school, said the two recent suicides have sent a shiver not only through the school community but the entire city. "This is so incredibly tragic for everyone," Danielson said. "It's a very, very close school and it's always been that way. The kids, they don't understand how this could happen. And that extends beyond the campus."
Preston said there is a new mobile application that lets troubled teens text a crisis line to get help. More information on that resource is available by calling 540.777.3273.
Beyond that, Preston said parents should not hesitate to talk to their children if they suspect them to be struggling. "The message to parents is to trust your gut," he said. "Parents need to feel that they can ask tough questions of their kids."