Diocesan News

Douglaston’s Newest Senior Priest Recalls 95-Year Christmas Journey in the Diocese of Brooklyn

December 2, 2025
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Father Dominick Cutrone (center) is shown here visiting Santa with his brother, Frank, and sister, Mary, in this family photo from 1941. Their parents, Vito and Lena Cutrone, worked hard to make sure their children were well-fed, clothed, and happy during the Great Depression and World War II. (Photo: Courtesy of Father Dominick Cutrone)

DOUGLASTON — The Great Depression of the 1930s was a global economic downturn that plunged the world into poverty. And, so, it was in Bushwick, where Vito and Lena Cutrone struggled to make Christmas merry for their kids, Dominick, Frank, and Mary. 

Today, Dominick, the firstborn, is 95, and the oldest priest currently residing in the Diocese of Brooklyn. 

He spent 43 years at Our Lady of Grace Church in Gravesend — 18 years as pastor and the rest in residence. 

The retired priest was just settling into his new home at the Mugavero Residence for Senior Priests at the Immaculate Conception Center in Douglaston on Nov. 21 when he took a break to recall the joys of childhood, the Advent season, and Christmas.  

He told The Tablet that his family mostly lived in Bushwick, but also spent a few years in Middletown, New York. His father, an immigrant from Bari, Italy, was in the ice business in both places. 

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Father Cutrone’s mother was born in the U.S., but her family was also from Bari, a port city facing the Adriatic Sea at the heel of the “boot” of southern Italy. 

“They always had food on the table, and we always had clothes on,” Father Cutrone said. “So, we never knew we were poor.” 

The couple’s efforts went even further, he added. 

“One year, my father and mother saved enough money to buy me a tricycle,” Father Cutrone recalled. “My brother got one of those cars that you sit in, and you pedaled it. My sister got a carriage and a doll. 

“That’s all we got,” he said. “But we couldn’t believe that — it was like a million dollars!” 

Father Cutrone said the family found joy in observing the customs of the Church, including the lighting of the Advent candles. 

He credited his mother for nurturing the household’s spiritual tone. Before marriage, she had considered a vocation as a religious sister. 

Father Dominick Cutrone shows off the tricycle he got for Christmas as a kid. He said it was the only gift he got one year, but for him, it was as if he got “a million dollars.” (Photo: Courtesy of Father Dominick Cutrone)

“My parents were matched,” Father Cutrone said with a chuckle.

“My mother,” he continued, “wanted to become a nun, so my grandfather said, ‘No, I’m sorry, Lena, you have to get married.’ And so, they matched her up with my father.” 

He said his mother’s parents knew his father’s family in Bari. 

“My mother told my grandfather, ‘I’ll marry Vito, provided we go out and buy our own wedding gift.’ My grandfather said, ‘I don’t care what you buy.’ ” 

So, the couple, in 1927, went to a Manhattan statuary dealer and purchased a 5-and-a-half-foot statue of ‘Our Lady of Grace.” 

“And little did I know that I was going to spend 43 years in Our Lady of Grace,” Father Cutrone said. 

He said his mother eventually donated that statue to the parish. 

Father Cutrone also recalled how his mother organized May Crowning ceremonies of the Blessed Mother in their Bushwick neighborhood. 

He said Lena was very entrepreneurial in how she sewed ceremonial dresses that the participating neighborhood girls used year after year. 

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In the earlier years, most of the kids came from Italian families. Later years saw more girls from Caribbean families as the area’s demographic changed, Father Cutrone said. 

After the traditions took hold, Lena would purchase dozens of small statues with her own money and then raffled them off, with all proceeds going to her parish, St. Catherine of Genoa in East Flatbush. 

Father Dominick Cutrone’s red cover isn’t a Christmas blanket per se, but it’ll do to keep him warm — and festive too — as Advent 2025 continues in the Diocese of Brooklyn. At 95, he is settling in at his new home in the Mugavero Residence for Senior Priests at the Immaculate Conception Center in Douglaston. (Photo: Bill Miller)

One year, her son recalled, she presented the pastor with $3,000. 

Father Cutrone said he worked as a pastor to encourage these Church customs, especially at Christmas. 

“Midnight Mass was always a big thing,” he said. “It was an Italian custom for the pastor to carry baby Jesus in his arms before Mass started. And I blessed Baby Jesus at the procession, and I carried him up to the altar and placed him in the crib.” 

Father Cutrone, ordained in 1955, was assigned to several Brooklyn parishes before coming to Our Lady of Grace in 1983. He said that he loved all of his years there, but now he is excited to begin a new life at the Mugavero Residence. 

Two of his new neighbors on the third floor are longtime chums, Msgr. Joseph Pfeiffer and Father Edmund Brady. Together they played golf all over the U.S. and skied throughout the world. 

But Father Cutrone said he finds wonder during Advent and Christmas wherever he calls home. 

“It’s the fact that the Christ Child was born,” he explained. “He was born not just for everybody else, but actually for me, too. And I can’t believe it.”