His four brothers were mob bosses, but he had chosen the path of faith: Father Louis Gigante, a Catholic priest central to the rebuilding of the South Bronx, has died at age 90 after a life that seems straight out of a movie script.
Father Louis bore a heavy last name for a priest. Vincent, one of his brothers known as ‘Chin,’ roamed the streets of the Village in his slippers and robe pretending to be crazy to avoid jail time: he had actually been for years at the head of the Genovese clan, the most powerful Cosa Nostra boss after John Gotti.
Louis had also become famous, at least in New York, but for other reasons: he had transformed one of the city’s worst slums from a den of misery and crime into a model neighborhood by building thousands of clean and safe houses. A “street” priest and spiritual adviser to thousands of residents who, according to statistics, had a one in twenty chance of dying a natural death. He roamed the streets with a baseball bat to defend himself against potential enemies.
However, Father Louis-or Father G.–as he was called from Hunts Point to City Hall–also had a blot on his past: a year ago he had been taken to court for molesting a young girl and a young boy in the 1960s and 1970s. Both cases are still open in New York Superior Court.
