Father Jorge Ortiz-Garay
St. Brigid’s Catholic Church (Brooklyn, NY)
The first Catholic priest known to have died of the coronavirus in the United States, Father Ortiz-Garay spent the last years of his life at St. Brigid’s, a parish in a working class area on the edge of Bushwick. He was well known for his outreach to Latino immigrants in Brooklyn, particularly those who came from Mexico, like he did as a young man. Born in 1971 to a wealthy family in Mexico City, he became a lawyer and was engaged to be married when he felt a call to the priesthood. He left his fiancée and his legal practice, studied first in Italy and then at a seminary in Newark, and became a priest in 2004. He died from complications related to the coronavirus on March 27 at the age of 49.
