Priest for Jayden Lenescar Ponders Innocence, Suffering

Home Crime Priest for Jayden Lenescar Ponders Innocence, Suffering

By Sarah Portlock and Derrick Taylor

Friends and relatives set up a makeshift memorial this week for Jayden Lenescar, 4, outside his home in Crown Heights. Photo: Portlock/Brooklyn Ink
Friends and relatives set up a makeshift memorial this week for Jayden Lenescar, 4, outside his home in Crown Heights. Photo: Portlock/Brooklyn Ink

Father Andrew Struzzieri received a phone call this week from Mackenzy Lenescar, whose four-year-old son had been murdered on Oct. 23, allegedly at the hands of his mother and her companion.

Would Father Andy, as he is known, conduct his son’s funeral?

Struzzieri said yes. He has been struggling with what to say ever since. Father Andy is 62 and has been a priest for 34 years, and he has never faced this responsibility. His hair is white, and his demeanor gentle. He has been the pastor at St. Matthew Roman Catholic Church in Crown Heights for 10 years.

“I feel very sad for them – my heart goes out to the family,” he said, his hands folded calmly in front of him. “When I saw the headlines in the paper, it just disgusted me. I couldn’t read it.”

Jayden Lenescar died from extensive bruising and internal bleeding, and police arrested his mother, Myrna Chenphang, 25, and her companion, Steven Dadaille, 26, on Oct. 24 and charged them with second-degree murder for beating Jayden with their hands and a belt, police said. The New York City chief medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide after an autopsy revealed Jayden died from blunt impact injuries to his torso, back, legs, arms, and buttocks, according to the criminal complaint filed by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. Chenphang and Dadaille are currently held at the Rikers Island jail and will be arraigned in Brooklyn criminal court on Friday. Messages left with their attorneys were not immediately returned. Chenphang may be attending Jayden’s wake on Friday evening because inmates are allowed to attend significant events with an escort, said a Department of Correction spokesman. The spokesman would not comment on the particular case for security reasons.

Father Andy, meanwhile, has spent his week preparing a funeral mass. He has considered several themes. “The first thing that comes to my mind is that this shouldn’t be,” he said in an interview with The Brooklyn Ink this week, from the brownstone offices of his church. “A parent shouldn’t have to bury a child.”

He has thought about the innocence of the child, he said, and about the suffering and pain the child endured, but how he would not have been able to articulate the pain.

And the softspoken and contemplative Father Andy has thought about Jayden’s parents and his family, and if they are angry at God. “God is big enough to take it – they shouldn’t be afraid of any of their feelings at all,” he said.

He also believes it is his duty to discuss the mother and her boyfriend in the service, but will wait to get the approval to do so from Jayden’s father, Mackenzy Lenescar. “We have to pray for them,” he said calmly. “She must be experiencing so much guilt.”

On Thursday morning, Father Andy met with Jayden’s maternal grandmother, Diane Tate, to choose readings for the traditional Catholic funeral mass. “We had a beautiful conversation,” he said.

The first reading will be from the Book of Lamentations, 3:17-26. Father Andy noted the sadness in the passage, and said, “I think that touched her.”

The second reading is from a letter from St. Paul to the Romans, 8:31-35 and 37-39, which “gives so much hope,” Father Andy said.

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.

Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died-more than that, who was raised to life-is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

Neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And, the gospel portion will be from the Gospel of Mark, 10:13-16 in which Jesus tells children to come to him and he embraces them.

But Father Andy is still working out what he will say during his sermon.

“I keep on reflecting on that. I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I’ll keep reflecting.”

The funeral will be at 10:30 am on Saturday, Oct. 31 at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church at 1123 Eastern Parkway at Utica Avenue, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. There will be a viewing from 9 to 10:30 am. Following a burial at Pinelawn Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, there will be a repass at St. Matthew’s Church.

On Friday evening, the family will hold a wake from 4 to 7 pm at the Robeson and Brown Funeral Home at 396 Gates Ave., at Nostrand Avenue.

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