This is the last thing you want to hear. Awful. Awful. Awful.
A priest on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame died Monday in San Antonio from an apparent suicide.
Catholic News Service reported Father Virgilio Elizondo was found dead in his home Monday from a reported self-inflicted gunshot wound. Elizondo was 80 years-old.
A report from Catholic News Service says Elizondo was known as “the father of U.S. Latino religious thought,” and co-founded the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio, later renamed the Mexican American Catholic College. Elizondo joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2000, after receiving the Laetare Medal in 1997.
Last May, Elizondo was named secondarily in a lawsuit alleging he sexually abused a young boy who was living in a San Antonio orphanage in the early 1980’s. Catholic News Service reports Elizondo denied the claim in a statement and in conversations with friends, and claimed he was prepared to fight the allegations in court.
