Paulist Father Joe Ciccone is originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., although most of his family now lives in New Jersey. He was born in October of 1952 and has two married sisters. He discovered the Paulist Fathers after a seven-year career as an Art Director for a major New York advertising firm. He had received his undergraduate degree in Communication Design in 1974 from the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, NY. Fr. Joe joined the Paulists in 1983, received a Masters of Divinity in 1988 from the Catholic University of America, and was ordained on May 13, 1989.
Most of Fr. Joe’s ministerial career has been in campus ministry. Like Fr. Greg, he first served at St. Andrew’s Parish and its missions in Clemson, South Carolina (1988-1993), then at St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish in Boulder, Colorado, (1993- 2000).
It was while he was in Colorado that he learned to ski at the age of 40! In 2000 he joined the staff of the Paulist Center in Boston for five years, which was followed with becoming the pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Knoxville, Tennessee (2005-2010). He then accepted a challenging assignment as Director/Pastor of the St. Thomas More Newman Center for The Ohio State University in Columbus (2010-2018). In 2018 his transfer to NYC to become the pastor of the Paulist mother church was short-lived, as he was confronted with a serious diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his right hip. Yet, he survived five months of chemotherapy, and is now cancer free, thanks to a great oncologist and the prayer support of many!
After thirty-one years as a Paulist priest, Fr. Joe is now excited for the wonderful opportunity to serve the Catholic American Community in Rome. He relishes his Italian ancestry, which makes his time here extra special. His maternal grandfather’s nephew lives on the island of Procida, in the Bay of Naples, and his great grandmother was from Sorrento. Now, he longs to make new friends in Rome and learn from the experiences of all of you who comprise our community. In true Paulist style, Fr. Joe has listened to believers and non-believers alike, always hoping to find mutual connections in the power of the Gospel.
