Home Scandal and Gossip Why? Windsor Terrace priest kills self inside church rectory

Why? Windsor Terrace priest kills self inside church rectory

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Rev. Patrick Burns
Pictured, Rev. Patrick Burns.
Rev. Patrick Burns
Pictured, Rev. Patrick Burns.

What led to Brooklyn priest, Rev. Patrick Burns committing suicide? Left behind 16 page suicide note. 

A Brooklyn priest killed himself inside a church rectory less than two weeks before Christmas. 

The body of the Rev. Patrick Burns, 57, was found a little after 5 p.m. Dec. 14 in the living room of the rectory at Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Windsor Terrace, according to the nypost.

Police sources revealed the priest slashing his left wrist, with an empty bottle of the antipsychotic drug Risperidone discovered in the room. Also found was a 16-page suicide note.

‘I’m shocked and amazed,’ the church’s music director, Ivonne Rojas, told via the nypost. ‘I would never think he did this.’

Burns’ death is a ‘tragedy,’ a Diocese of Brooklyn spokeswoman said.

Police discovered the dead priest after the church’s pastor, the Rev. Larry Ryan, requested a wellness check on him.

Burns struggled with health issues in the past. He spent an unspecified amount of time away from the pulpit on medical leave at one point, according to an obituary in The Tablet magazine.

He was a minister at Holy Name’s Office of Parish Giving since January.

The Brooklyn native attended Good Shepherd School in Marine Park and later Sheepshead Bay High School before attending college and the seminary, according to the obituary.

Burns, who spoke Spanish in addition to English, was ordained in 1992 and served in the Spanish-speaking New York City neighborhoods of Bushwick, Jackson Heights, Sunset Park and Corona, along with Woodside and Belle Harbor, the obit noted.

Not immediately clear was whether Patrick Burns had transgressed church mores or had been the subject of any incrimination.

Rev. Patrick Burns
The body of Rev. Patrick Burns, was discovered on December 14 in living room of the rectory at the Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Windsor Terrace
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