CV NEWS FEED // A Catholic priest from Denver, Colorado, credits his Catholic school education with saving him from a future in prison and helping him discover his vocation.
In a video Denver Catholic published, Father Daniel Ciucci said that in elementary school, his behavioral problems were so concerning that his pediatrician told his mother, “If he doesn’t get figured out he’ll wind up in jail someday.”
“So my mom went home and cried, and that next year I went to Catholic school,” Father Ciucci said.
Father Ciucci said in the article Denver Catholic published along with the video that instead of attending regular anger management classes, after a while, at Catholic school, he was admitted into the talented and gifted program.
“The teachers weren’t just saying ‘stop it, stop it, stop it,’ they saw something beautiful in me and actually just redirected it,” he said in the video.
The priest also credits the school for fostering his masculinity and his desire to embrace the priesthood. “The beautiful gift of knowing who I am in the eyes of God, irrespective of being a priest,” allowed him to discern.
He continued, “Even just knowing who I was as a man, in this century, and knowing that masculinity and femininity are not interchangeable, and they’re both good, and they’re both needed,” helped him discern the priesthood, and it was through his Catholic education that he learned these truths.
Father Ciucci praised his parents for the sacrifice they made in paying for a Catholic school education, and concluded, “My parents’ decision to enroll me in a Catholic school was so worth the sacrifice.”
