Our Capuchin brother Victor Kriley, OFM Cap., 88, died on March 7, 2006, at Embassy of Saxonburg under the care of Bridges Hospice Care in Saxonburg, PA. He had been a resident at Embassy since December 2012, and had benefitted from the support of caregivers for more than 13 years. After many years of service in the United States and in Papua New Guinea, these final years allowed him to benefit from the encouragement and love of his large number of relatives – brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews – who had always seen our brother as a friend and a hero. In the same way, Victor himself once wrote this when he celebrated his Jubilee as a priest:
Sometimes in ministry I have met people who did not seem to have any other members of their family that they communicated with -- no members of the family cared for one another. I could not understand that and didn't really believe it until a death happened in that family. Other members hardly had time to come to the funeral to pay their respects to a brother or a sister. I am blessed with a wonderful family. It was very common for my sisters and brothers (along with their spouses) to make special efforts to come together for an evening - sometime each month. I'm grateful for my family and how we have stayed close to one another.
The family continued that “closeness” throughout his life; many were there at his funeral, together in prayer, as he went on to meet Sister Death.
Albert Kriley was born on May 2, 1937, in Jefferson Township (Butler County), PA, the son of John and Marie (Gillespie) Kriley. His parish was St. Mary of the Assumption in nearby Herman, and was staffed by our friars from shortly after we Capuchins arrived from Bavarian in 1873. One of twelve children, he attended the parish elementary school, so it was not too far a “stretch” for the family to see him “leave home” for his high school and college years at St. Fidelis High School & College Seminary which sits next to his parish church. He had breathed the Capuchin air, and he would spend his life and work among us.
He was invested as a Capuchin in 1957 after his sophomore year of college (the custom at the time) in Annapolis, MD, where our St. Conrad Friary novitiate was located. It was there that he was given the name Victor, a name inspired by one of our great Capuchin leaders, Victor Green, OFM Cap. (1902-1957), who had died suddenly on April 6, 1957, just a few months before the July investiture. Victor Green was serving as pastor of St. Mary’s from July 1956 and had served the previous six years as our Provincial Minister. 
The “new” Victor (i.e., Kriley) made his first vows as a Capuchin friar on July 14, 1958, and returned to St. Fidelis to complete his college years.
Fellow Capuchin classmates included our brothers Myron Flax (+2020), Edward Laurent (+2014), Robert E. McCreary (+2021) and Lester Knoll who survives him.
The family surely missed Victor in 1960 when he began his studies in theology for the priesthood at Capuchin College in Washington, DC. But the family celebrated heartily at his ordination to the priesthood on February 8, 1964. Victor accepted his challenging first assignment to become a missionary in Papua New Guinea with open arms and found himself in his new home barely a month after that ordination. Sadly, his mother passed away on September 11th of that year, and owing to the difficulties and cost of international travel at the time, he was left to grieve without his family in his new homeland. Many of the friars in PNG were able to support Victor in his loss, having experienced the loss of their own parents while oceans away.
His first assignment was as parochial vicar at Mary, Mother of the Good Shepherd Cathedral in Mendi. There, Victor learned Tok Pisin, the emerging country’s language for tribal unity, and became familiar with missionary life and the various cultures of the Southern Highlands countryside. In all, he would come to serve for 20 years in the country with assignments to parishes in Kagua, Ialibu, Margarima, Tari, and a second stint in Mendi.
Our confrere Roger White succeeded Victor as pastor of St. Clare Parish in Ialibu in 1973, and recalls that Victor worked among the Imbongu tribe: “It was a wonderful experience for me to witness what Fr. Victor had accomplished. He encouraged family prayer, recognized the leadership present there and set up with the leaders a formula for conducting group prayer. As a result, gatherings of 10 to 15 men and women gathered each week, sometimes in the church, but more often in family grass huts for Bible reading, discussion, prayer and singing. It would go on for a few hours and several times a week, and in numerous places. It enriched the faith of so many of the area’s people.”
Another confrere and PNG veteran, Ben Regotti, remembers our brother “as a quiet, cheerful friar who was working hard for the building up of the church and the kingdom of God. I remember being impressed with his skill at collaborating with the three Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions who were stationed in Ialibu. He always went out of his way to make sure they were happy, safe and provided for. And his way of sharing the work of Church building with those women was a model of collaborative ministry that the Mendi Diocese was known for. He was a great example to me in that regard. He also had a personality that enabled him to get along very well with the many lay missionaries that worked in the diocese in those days.”
In 1986, Victor completed his missionary work and returned to the United States. He shared his concerns with some friars whether he would be able to do ministry in the USA, especially if it meant living in a large city. His first assignment was to his former home parish for two years, which certainly allowed for adjustment and for the support of his family. He moved on to St. Joseph the Worker Parish in York, PA, in 1993, a challenging change of pace with an active community of middle-class families and large grade school. He would limit himself to hospital ministry there in 1998, where his graced presence was a gift to many a patient and, often, their grieving families. After a three-year stint in Cumberland, MD’s Sacred Heart Hospital (2002-2005), he returned back home to his family and his home parish among the brothers in Herman, PA.
In 2007, Victor was assigned in residence at our St. Augustine motherhouse and assisted at Our Lady of the Angels Parish when he could. There was little doubt among the friars that Victor was weakening. His memory lapses became more frequent and his moods were not always predictable. He would enter a period in his life where even he was never sure what was happening. A nascent dementia became more and more apparent. All of that, accompanied by physical weakness, yielded to the recognition that he needed a kind of skilled care which his brother friars could not provide.
Victor became a resident at Saxony Health Care Center in Saxonburg, PA (now Embassy of Saxonburg) in December 2012. Provincial Minister Tom Betz (2016-2022) reflected on his time with him: “Victor would experience bouts of depression. Sometimes when he was depressed, he would lie still on his bed and not open his eyes or talk. Other times, he could be quite engaging.”
Tom continued: “His family and I often had conversations with his doctor about adjusting his medications, especially when he would go through one of his depressed episodes. At other times, he was very animated. When he felt good, as I was leaving, I would ask him for a blessing, and he often made up a very nice prayer, asking God to help me with my burdens, asking God to keep me strong. Honestly, a few times he prayed over me with sensitive understanding.”.
Our brother was preceded in death by his parents, Marie and John, his sisters Helen Grence, Aline Goodrich, and Eva Mae Kriley; his brothers Leonard, Floyd and Adrian. He is survived by his sisters Mary Carbin, Pearl Kocher, Sr. Frances Marie Kriley, CDP, and Rita Snyder, his brother John, and numerous nieces and nephews, their children, and many cousins.
Our Provincial Minister, Robert Marva, celebrated the Funeral Mass for Victor at his home parish in Herman, PA, among the family and friends who held him in esteem and who nurtured and supported him in love throughout the years. Our brother John Daya, a former pastor with Victor in York, PA, was the homilist.
Victor was a Capuchin friar for 68 years and a priest friar for 62 of them. May he rest in the light that knows no darkness and among the members of his eternal family sharing eternal life in Christ Jesus.
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
St. Margaret of Cortona Chapel
St. Augustine Friary
221 36th Street, Pittsburgh, PA
4:00 p.m. Reception of the Body
5:15 p.m Evening Prayer
6:30 p.m Public Visitation & Viewing
7:30 p.m Wake Service
Thursday, March 12, 2026
St. Mary Church, Herman, PA
Translation of body to St. Mary Church
10:00 a.m. Visitation with family
12:00 p.m. Mass of Christian Burial
followed by Interment in friars' plot of St. Mary Cemetery
Arrangements by D'Alessandro Funeral Home (Pittsburgh)