Denver Catholic

**Warning: this article contains tough subject matters which may be hard for some to read** G od draws straight with crooked lines, and every line matters in the masterpiece he crafts. Just ask Deacon Richard Milinazzo, whose difficult, crooked path led him to the permanent diaconate and a life of service to the Lord. Born in the small town of Jansen near the southern border of Colorado, Deacon Milinazzo's childhood was devoid of all the love a child deserves. His birth father abandoned him, and his mother left him and his younger siblings with his grandparents because she didn't have the means to raise them. His grandparents severely abused him. Eventually, he was given up for adoption at a foster home, where he became even more despon- dent. The foster home convinced his grandparents to take him back, and they were unhappy. Deacon Milinazzo's mom would show up sporadically, giving him a glimmer of hope that she might take him back. But she never did. Deacon Milinazzo often ran into the Jansen mountains to escape the turmoil at home and slept under the stars. He had a vague concept of God and remembers crying out to him in his sorrow. "I would always talk to God and ask him, 'Why have you left?'" Deacon Milinazzo recalled. "Why does my mom not love me? Why did she aban- don me?" One such day, a nine-year-old Rich sat on a dirt road in the mountains. School had just been released for the summer. "I was nine years old, and I thought, 'I'm going to commit sui- cide,'" he recalled. "I was going to jump off the top of this mountain and kill myself. So that day went by, and I went to sleep that night, and I was going kill myself that next morning." Come morning, his grandma woke him up, beat him and told him to pack his things. She said he and his siblings were going to Denver to live with their mom. So, they loaded into their uncle's car and set out for the city. When they knocked on their mom's door, they found her pregnant and living with a man who would become Deacon Milinazzo's eventual adopted father and two other small children. "The next thing I know, my mom's trying to commit suicide," Deacon Milinazzo said. "I see my adopted dad choking her and trying to hurt her, but what was really happening was he was trying to make her spit up the pills that she just tried to down. We had only been in Denver just a few hours. "That would be my life until I moved out at 18 years old," he con- tinued. "My mom always trying to commit suicide at least once a month." 'I never stopped mattering' Deacon Richard Milinazzo finds God-given purpose through strife BY AARON LAMBERT 46 JUNE-JULY 2024 | DENVER CATHOLIC WITN E SS O F H O P E

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