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Legendary Priest Is Coming to Broadway

By Murray Weiss | July 29, 2015 7:44am
 Father Pete  is coming to Broadway church.
Father Pete is coming to Broadway church.
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St. Monica's Church

MIDTOWN — It's a match made in Heaven.

Larger-than-life priest Peter Colapietro is heading to Broadway, where he's taking over a parish known as the “Actors Chapel.”

The legendary pastor, who has ministered to the rich, the poor, the famous and the notorious, will be moving to St. Malachy’s Catholic Church on Broadway and West 49th Street next month after spending two years at St. Monica’s on East 79th Street on First Avenue.

“When the Archbishop says you have to move, you have to move,” the fatalistic Father Pete acknowledged.

His new posting will put him back in touch with his Hell’s Kitchen roots.

For more than two decades, Colapietro served as the pastor of the Holy Cross Catholic Church on West 42nd Street when his flock was a mix of neighborhood types: crack addicts, prostitutes, drug dealers and the occasional bus driver from the nearby Port Authority Bus Terminal.

He ministered to the then hardscrabble neighborhood before it transitioned from a hellhole into a tourist-filled spot.

During his time at Holy Cross, he talked then-suicidal actor Mickey Rourke out of murdering a man who had abused Rourke’s model wife, Carre Otis, before planning to kill himself.

"Mickey already texted me he's thrilled I am moving to the Actor's Chapel," Colapietro said.

Father Pete was so beloved at Holy Cross that he left his final emotional Mass in 2013 to a standing ovation from a packed house and the sounds of the pipe and drums of the city's Department of Sanitation, to which he's the pastor.

Colapietro, 67, was also a regular at “Elaine’s” and known as priest to the late restaurateur’s celebrity crowd.

“For 30 years, Elaine Kaufman filled my belly and my soul," Father Pete observed. "I miss that woman with all my heart and half my liver.”

At St. Malachy's, he will likely feel instantly at home, considering the parish has served the likes of Fred Allen, Chris Farley, Alec Guinness and Colapietro’s old friend, Elaine Stritch, since opening in the 1890s.

And its chimes play "There's no business like show business" during Broadway matinee performances.

Widely known for his warmth and religious passion, Father Pete says he is anxious to get to work with the nuns at “this beautiful little church” on Broadway and meet the “little ones” already enrolled in children’s groups and elders in senior citizens groups.

And there is one other nicety St. Malachy's offers — the high-ceilinged, century-old church has an elevator that will prove handy taking his sizable frame around. Colapietro suffers a form of leukemia that he says will not kill him, but will eventually "make my remaining 40 years miserable."

Most people who know him hope they pass on before him — so he can perform the eulogy. "He's that good," said Steve McFadden, longtime friend and a founder of Ryan McFadden's on Second Ave.

In that spirit, Father Pete no longer makes the late night rounds as he did in his halcyon "Elaine's" days. But he admits he will likely pay a visit to a few old friends near Broadway, if for nothing more than to say hello.

“There’s Dez," he quickly says, referring to Desmond O'Brien, owner of Langan's on West 47th Street.

And there's Chris Logan, who tends bar at the Palm West on West 50th Street.

“I married him,” Father Pete recalled with a smile.