Msgr. Francis X. Gaeta, who headed Long Island Catholic parishes, dies at 86

Msgr. Francis X. Gaeta, a former pastor of Roman Catholic parishes in Westbury and Rocky Point, died Sunday following a long illness, church officials said.

Gaeta, 86, who headed St. Anthony of Padua parish in Rocky Point for much of the 1980s and St. Brigid parish in Westbury during the 1990s, had “not been in ministry since 2011,” said Sean Dolan, a spokesman for the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

Dolan did not specify Gaeta's illness or why he was no longer in ministry. He did not provide further biographical information.

Gaeta was on a list of clergy accused of sexual abuse that the diocese released in 2021 as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. The list said only that the alleged abuse took place in a church vehicle in West Babylon.

Gaeta never publicly responded to the allegation.

The diocese on Monday sent a notice to all priests in Nassau and Suffolk counties that funeral arrangements would be private and that no public memorial Masses for Gaeta were permitted.

Gaeta grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, where he served as an altar boy during Masses at the motherhouse of an order of nuns, according to a 1996 Newsday story. "I always remember wanting to be a priest," he said.

He attended Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Brooklyn, a six-year prep seminary. When his family moved to Ronkonkoma, he commuted on the Long Island Rail Road.

Ordained in 1963, his first assignment was to St. Joseph the Worker parish in East Patchogue. Gaeta went on to St. Vincent de Paul parish in Elmont and later, St. Margaret of Scotland parish in Selden, where he worked in youth ministry and home-based religious education.

From 1975 to 1977, he ran the religion department at a diocesan high school and served as an assistant diocesan superintendent of schools, Newsday reported.

He became pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in Rocky Point in 1979, and moved to St. Brigid in June 1989.

Gaeta was one of the central figures in a 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning series by Newsday reporter Robert Keeler that examined life in the St. Brigid parish. The series was later turned into a book.

Eric Bauman, a eucharistic minister at St. Brigid, said that Gaeta was known for promoting multiculturalism and reaching out to groups marginalized by the church such as gay and divorced people.

He once invited a couple dozen of them to a meeting at the parish where he tried to “welcome them back,” Bauman said.

Gaeta also tried to empower laypeople by giving them greater responsibility in the parish as the number of clergy declined in the diocese and nationwide, he said.