Padre Plaza

E. 139 St. and St Ann's Ave.

Bronx

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

Padre Plaza honors Father Roger Giglio (1943-1990), founder of St. Benedict the Moor Community Center. A native of Woburn, Massachusetts, Father Giglio was ordained in 1970 and served as the director of the Christian Formation Retreat Center in Andover, Massachusetts. In 1974, he moved to New York to work as a chaplain at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. He left that position in 1985 to focus on the problems of alcoholism and drug addiction, establishing St. Benedict Center “to enable homeless men and women and children in the South Bronx to live fuller lives and to restore to them the dignity of productive citizens.” Father Giglio’s untimely death from cancer at the age of 47 was a great loss to the community, but St. Benedict continues to implement his vision.