![]() ![]() Andrew in Bridgeport, Trinity High School and St. “I knew that from this moment forward, I had the opportunity to do that every day.” “It was an unbelievable feeling after nine years of formation to stand at the altar all by myself for the first time, and to speak the words of consecration – it was an incredibly powerful moment,” Weiss said. Weiss said he'll never forget the first time he celebrated Mass as a priest. ![]() When Weiss spoke to a priest three days later, the priest told him to take the inspiration seriously. “I heard this voice say to me, ‘be a priest,’” Weiss said.Īlthough Weiss likes to joke about that moment, saying that he stopped walking that route after that day, he couldn’t get the impression out of his head. He was walking across his high school campus in Orlando and something happened as he passed his parish church. Weiss had already applied to a teacher’s college in South Carolina. They were joining the service or getting jobs or getting married. In those days of the early 1960s, Weiss recalled, there were not a lot of people his age going to college. Weiss, who grew up in Florida, was nearing the end of high school and was thinking about becoming a priest – a process of prayer and reflection known in the spiritual life as discernment. “His ministry has been one of accessibility, engagement and sacrificial giving that has brought people closer to Christ,” Caggiano said. ![]() “I think his gift is to connect Catholic belief to our daily life.”Ĭaggiano agreed, saying, “throughout his priesthood (Weiss) has formed a deep bond with parishioners and served as a true spiritual father to many.” “Monsignor Weiss has a special way of drawing people in,” said Jeff McKenzie, a longtime parishioner, in a statement. Rose’s Church Hill Road campus in Newtown. To mark Weiss’ 50th year as an ordained Roman Catholic priest, well-wishers were planning to toast him during a dinner celebration Saturday at Danbury’s Amber Room Colonnade, and parishioners will celebrate his milestone at a 1:30 p.m. Most importantly, he gave face to the power of faith and its ability to transform lives, even in our darkest moments.” “When the eyes of the parish, the town and the entire nation were on him, he brought great grace, faith and strength and to all those staggering from the unthinkable. “Monsignor Weiss will perhaps forever be defined by his pastoral and personal response to the loss of 26 lives in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Dec. “We all are gifted with something that we can use to build up community, because that is what the Lord intends for us.”īridgeport Bishop Frank Caggiano praised Weiss’s legacy of spiritual leadership, noting that his “long antecedent of ministry that prepared him to serve so memorably in a time of unimaginable crisis.” “Community building has always been important to me, and when Sandy Hook happened, we really saw the extent of all the community coming together with incredible power,” Weiss said. The answer for Weiss was to say "yes" as much as possible. “I had to constantly question myself, ‘How am I going to keep the message of Christ alive in the midst of all this?’” ![]() The year Weiss graduated from seminary in 1968, “so much was going on with sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll and the assassination of the Kennedys and (Martin Luther) King that a lot of men in the church were leaving formation,” Weiss said of his early years studying to be a priest in upstate New York. “And Bishop Sheen said, ‘Don’t sit in the rectory waiting for the doorbell to ring – be a part of your community not just your church.’” “We were fortunate that Fulton Sheen was the bishop in Rochester (New York) when I was in seminary after Vatican II, when all these things were changing,” Weiss told Hearst Connecticut Media during an interview on Friday, one day after the 50th anniversary of his ordination. It’s easy enough to say for a veteran spiritual leader whose ministry here and in prior assignments in Bridgeport, Stamford, Monroe and Shelton have been marked by community-building, but Weiss said it’s the only way he has ever known. ![]()
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