New Auxiliary Bishops for Diocese

New Prelates Represent Diversity of Diocese

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed three Brooklyn priests – Msgrs. Guy A. Sansaricq, Octavio Cisneros and Frank J. Caggiano – as auxiliary bishops of the Diocese of Brooklyn. The announcement was made June 6 in Washington by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio will ordain the new

bishops at a Mass of Episcopal Ordination to be celebrated at a site still to be determined on Tuesday, Aug. 22. Edward Cardinal Egan, Archbishop of New York, will attend.

As auxiliary bishops, they will join Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius A. Catanello, Vicar for Clergy, in assisting Bishop DiMarzio to serve the sacramental, spiritual and pastoral needs of the 1.8 million Catholics who reside in Brooklyn and Queens, the two boroughs that make up the 153-year-old Diocese.

“I look forward to working with our three new auxiliary bishops and Bishop Catanello to form a pastoral team that will seek to serve the needs of our Diocese effectively in the years to come,” Bishop DiMarzio said.

He said he prayed they will have “the strength and fortitude to follow in the footsteps of the Apostles, ministering to the faithful of Brooklyn and Queens in all of their needs.”

The Bishop underlined stronger evangelization efforts and vocation recruitment as principal tasks he will ask them to assist him with, saying “there are no more important goals facing the Church today.”

The last time the Diocese ordained auxiliary bishops for service in the Diocese – for Bishop Catanello and Bishop Gerald M. Barbarito, now the bishop of Palm Beach – was Aug. 22, 1994, 12 years to the day before the upcoming ordination ceremony.

The priests named by the Holy Father come from family backgrounds that reflect some of the ethnic diversity that exists among the Catholics who worship in the 216 parishes located in what is known as a “Diocese of Immigrants.”

Two are foreign-born. Bishop–elect Sansaricq, 71, is a native of Haiti, while Bishop-elect Cisneros, 60, was born in Cuba. The parents of Brooklyn-born Bishop-elect Caggiano, 47, emigrated from Italy. Each of the new bishops speak two or more languages.

At the present time, Bishop-elect Sansaricq is the pastor of St. Jerome’s Church, Flatbush, which has a large Creole-speaking population. He has served there for 13 years. His early pastoral experience before coming to the U.S. in the early ‘70s included ministry to Haitians and Bahamians in the Bahamas.

Bishop-elect Cisneros is Secretary for Priestly Life and the rector of Cathedral Residence of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston, which provides spiritual formation for future priests attending college courses prior to continuing their theological studies leading in a major seminary. His own path to the priesthood began in the early 1960s shortly after he came to this country through Operation Pedro Pan, a Catholic humanitarian effort that brought 14,000 unaccompanied minors to the U.S. from Cuba.

As Vicar for Evangelization and Pastoral Life, Bishop-elect Caggiano coordinates the work of several offices, including pastoral planning, liturgy and worship, spirituality, faith formation and leadership formation. In his position, he spearheads Bishop DiMarzio’s effort to promote the Church’s “new evangelization,” whose focus includes re-evangelizing those who have been baptized but have not been formed in the faith or have drifted away from the Church.

Born in Jeremi, Haiti, Oct. 6, 1934, Bishop-elect Sansaricq said he was 13 when he decided he wanted to be a priest. He attended the minor seminary of the Diocese of Les Cayes for five years, then he went on to St. Paul Pontifical Seminary in Ottawa, Canada, for seven years, studying philosophy and theology, earning master’s degrees in both. In 1960, he returned home to be ordained to the priesthood in the cathedral in Port-au-Prince.

A year after ordination, his bishop asked him to become chaplain for Haitian immigrants in the Bahamas, assigned to the Benedictine Priory of St. Francis in Nassau, from where he said he “hopped from island to island,” ministering to both Bahamian and Haitian immigrants.

‘Plight of Immigrants’
In that work, he “discovered the plight of immigrants in general and especially of undocumented immigrants,” he said, adding that it was where he began to develop his skills as an advocate for people on the move.

After seven years in the Bahamas, he received a scholarship to study social sciences at the Gregorian University in Rome and earned a master’s degree in 1971. In that year he came to the Diocese of Brooklyn and began a 22-year association with Sacred Heart parish in Cambria Heights as a parochial vicar.

He was named St. Jerome’s pastor in 1993.

As a leader in the Haitian community of Brooklyn and Queens, Bishop-elect Sansaricq has coordinated the Haitian Apostolate of the diocese. He has also served as national director of the Haitian Apostolate for the U.S. bishops and as a consultant to them.

His involvements include publishing a quarterly newsletter on Haitian matters concerning the Church, conducting a pastoral institute in Creole that attracts 90 students annually and organizing an annual convention of the Haitian Apostolate, an annual retreat for priests and a yearly youth congress. He is also a co-founder of Haitian Americans United for Progress, a service agency.

From Havana to Wisconsin
Bishop-elect Cisneros, born in the province of Las Villas, Cuba, July 19, 1945, attended schools in Havana until 1961 when he left his homeland as part of Operation Pedro Pan and was settled in Marquette, Mich. He graduated from St. Paul High School in Negaunee, Mich.

In 1962 he began studies for the priesthood at St. Lawrence Minor Seminary in Mount Calvary, Wisc., where he earned an associate arts degree, then went on to Niagara University for a bachelor’s degree. His first year of theological studies was taken at DeSales School of Theology in Washington in 1967 and a year later he continued at the Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, L.I. He was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Francis J. Mugavero in St. James Cathedral, Brooklyn, May 29, 1971.

His assignments in the Brooklyn Diocese have included eight years as a parochial vicar of St. Michael’s parish, Sunset Park; 12 years as coordinator of the Spanish Apostolate and four years as pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows, Corona. In 1991, he began a six-year term as episcopal vicar of the Brooklyn East Vicariate before being named rector of Cathedral Residence in 1997.

In his work within the Hispanic community over the years, Bishop-elect Cisneros was president of the Conference of Diocesan Directors of the Spanish Apostolate, president of the Northeast Catholic Center for Hispanics, vice-president of El Instituto Nacional Hispano de Liturgia and a member of the Bishop’s Committee on the Liturgy/Hispanic subcommittee.

Since 1985 he has promoted interest in the life of Father Felix Varela, a Cuban priest who ministered to Irish and Italian immigrants in New York in the early 19th century. He is a founding member and president of the Felix Varela Foundation and vice-postulator of the cause of canonization of the priest, whom he called “a social reformer, advocating for those who suffered discrimination, living a saintly life” until his death in St. Augustine, Fla., in 1853.

From Gravesend, Brooklyn
Bishop-elect Caggiano was born in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn March 29, 1959, the son of Arnaldo and Gennarina Caggiano, both of whom came to this country in 1958 from the town of Caggiano in the province of Salerno, Italy. His father died in 2002.

The new bishop attended SS. Simon and Jude School in Gravesend; Regis H.S., Manhattan; Cathedral College, Douglaston, and Immaculate Conception Seminary, Huntington, L.I. He was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Francis J. Mugavero May 16, 1987.

After ordination, he served in two Brooklyn parishes – St. Agatha’s in Bay Ridge and St. Athanasius in Bensonhurst – before beginning five years of graduate studies in sacred theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1961. He earned a doctorate in 1996.
When he returned to the diocese, he served at St. Jude’s parish in Canarsie and then as pastor of St. Dominic’s parish in Bensonhurst. After an appointment as director of the Permanent Diaconate Office in 2002, he was named by Bishop DiMarzio in 2004 to serve as Vicar for Evangelization and Pastoral Life.

Last year, Bishop-elect Caggiano headed a large committee that spent several months planning a massive, multi-lingual celebration in KeySpan Park in Coney Island to close the Eucharistic Year that had been proclaimed by Pope John Paul II. It was also designed to promote the strengthening of family life.

The day-long event was scheduled for Oct. 15, but 13 inches of rain over the eight days preceding it forced a cancellation. “Man proposes,” said then-Msgr. Caggiano philosophically, “and God disposes.”

Pope John Paul honored the three bishops-designate for their priestly service by naming Bishop-elect Cisneros and Bishop-elect Sansaricq Prelates of Honor with the title of Monsignor in 1988 and 1999 respectively. The Holy Father named Bishop-elect Caggiano a Papal Chaplain with the title of Monsignor in 2003.

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