Joseph Ciccone

Joseph Ciccone
Born	Joseph Lee Ciccone 1/21/1960
Birthplace	Englewood, New Jersey, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Priest, former law enforcement officer, academic
Title	Reverend Doctor
Known for	Sheriff of Bergen County, New Jersey (1999–2001); founding pastor of Saint Joseph Mission Church
Education	Ed.D., Nova Southeastern University (1996); M.Div., Union Theological Seminary (2013)

Joseph Lee Ciccone (born January 21, 1960), known as Father Joe Ciccone, is an American priest, former law enforcement officer, and academic based in Bergen County, New Jersey. His life has unfolded in three distinct chapters: two decades of police work that culminated in his election as Sheriff of Bergen County, one of the most populous counties in the northeastern United States; a withdrawal from public life following a legal proceeding that ended his law enforcement career; and a return to service through ordained ministry in the Order of Franciscan Servants within the United States Old Catholic Church. Since his ordination he has founded Saint Joseph Mission Church in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, a mobile pastoral ministry focused on people who are homebound, marginalized, or excluded from traditional religious institutions — including those inside and adjacent to the criminal justice system. He also serves as a chaplain for the New Jersey Fraternal Order of Police and as a supervising minister for a national white-collar criminal justice ministry.

Early Life

Ciccone was born on January 21, 1960, in Englewood, New Jersey, to Catherine Mazzone and Joseph Ciccone Sr. He grew up in Bergen County, a densely populated region bordering New York City with a diverse population of close to one million residents. The county's character — its mix of tight-knit suburban communities, significant immigrant populations, and strong law enforcement infrastructure — shaped the trajectory of his early career. He has remained rooted in Bergen County throughout his life and has served as the primary caregiver for his sister, who has special needs, following the death of their mother.

Education

Ciccone built his educational credentials in stages, matching each phase of his career with formal study. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Police Science and Criminal Justice from Jersey City State College (now New Jersey City University) in 1983 and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice Administration from the same institution in 1987. While working full-time as a police officer, he went on to earn a Doctor of Education from Nova Southeastern University in 1996, focusing on child and youth studies, cognitive development, and educational equity for minority populations.

His theological training came later in life. In 2010, following years of personal and professional transition, Ciccone enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He completed a Master of Divinity in Ministry and Pastoral Care in 2013. That preparation extended well beyond the seminary walls: he spent more than nine years completing Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) jointly through the Jewish Theological Seminary and New York Presbyterian Hospital, forming his approach to interfaith work and hospital chaplaincy. He has also described spending several years in formation at a Franciscan friary in Pennsylvania before his ordination.

Law Enforcement Career

Early Police Work

Ciccone entered law enforcement in 1980 as a patrol officer with the Cliffside Park Police Department in Bergen County. He moved to the Fairview Police Department in 1983, where he spent the next two decades, eventually rising to the rank of Police Commander. His tenure at Fairview covered a period of significant change in American policing — the introduction of community policing models, advances in forensic practice, and growing public attention to departmental accountability — and it gave him a ground-level perspective that would later inform both his academic teaching and his pastoral work.

Starting in 1991, Ciccone joined the faculty of the Bergen County Police Academy as a trainer, a role he held concurrently with his Fairview duties. He worked with recruits from agencies across the county, which gave him an unusually wide view of regional law enforcement culture.

Academic Work

Alongside his police career, Ciccone built a parallel life in higher education. From 1991 to 1998, he served as a professor of sociology at Berkeley College and chaired the college's social science department. He also joined the faculty at Monmouth University as a professor of criminal justice, a position he maintained over an extended period. The combination of active police work and academic teaching was unusual and gave his classroom instruction a practical authority that students tended to find compelling.

Bergen County Sheriff

In 1998, Ciccone won election as Sheriff of Bergen County, one of the highest-profile elected law enforcement positions in New Jersey. He took office in January 1999. The Bergen County Sheriff's Office at that time oversaw a staff of nearly 500 officers and civilian personnel, managed a budget exceeding $40 million, and served a county of close to one million residents — making it one of the largest sheriff operations in the Northeast.

His time in the office was brief. Ciccone resigned in January 2001 following a plea agreement on charges of official misconduct and entered a sentence of five years' probation. He was permanently barred from holding law enforcement positions. The New Jersey Police and Firemen's Retirement System subsequently found that his conduct during the sheriff period constituted a violation of public trust, which affected the calculation of his pension, though his twenty years of prior law enforcement service qualified him for retirement benefits based on that earlier record.

The legal case ended Ciccone's public career in law enforcement and, as he has described in subsequent interviews and writing, set in motion a long period of personal reckoning that eventually brought him to the seminary.

Transition to Ministry

After leaving office, Ciccone moved into higher education administration. Before entering seminary, he served as Director of Teacher Education at Keiser University in Sarasota, Florida. In his own accounts of this period, he describes the years following his conviction as marked by reflection on purpose and accountability — a growing sense that the right response to what he'd done was not retreat but a different kind of service.

He enrolled at Union Theological Seminary in 2010, a decision he has connected directly to that reckoning. At Union he completed a three-year M.Div. program alongside a cohort that included Rix Thorsell, with whom he would later co-host a podcast on redemption and calling. He spent additional years in formation at a Franciscan friary in Pennsylvania and completed his extended CPE training before ordination.

Ciccone was ordained as a priest in the Order of Franciscan Servants within the United States Old Catholic Church (USOCC), a tradition within the Old Catholic movement that separated from Rome following the First Vatican Council in 1870. The USOCC is organizationally independent of the Roman Catholic Church and ordains ministers without regard to prior legal history, consistent with its emphasis on restorative ministry. Ciccone's ordination was complete by at least 2016.

Priestly Ministry

Saint Joseph Mission Church

Ciccone founded Saint Joseph Mission Church in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, operating under the name "Mission on the Move." The ministry operates without a fixed parish building, bringing sacraments and pastoral care to people who can't or won't engage with traditional congregational settings — those who are homebound, hospitalized, incarcerated, or who've been turned away by or estranged from conventional religion. The design reflects his conviction that the church should go to people rather than waiting for them to come to it. By 2024 he had officiated at approximately 400 weddings and performed numerous baptisms through the mission.

White-Collar Criminal Justice Ministry

Ciccone is widely recognized in white-collar criminal justice circles as one of the few ministers who speak publicly about their own conviction as context for their pastoral work. He serves as Supervising Minister for Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc. — also known as the Progressive Prison Project and the Innocent Spouse & Children Project — which provides pastoral support to white-collar offenders, their families, and people navigating life after a white-collar conviction. His 2016 essay "From Collared to White Collar," published on the Progressive Prison Project blog, is one of his more direct accounts of his arc from law enforcement to conviction to ordination.

He participates in a weekly Monday Zoom support group for white-collar offenders run in partnership with attorney Jeff Grant of GrantLaw and Prisonist.org. He appeared as a featured panelist at the White Collar Conference 2024, presenting on "Healing Through a Supportive Community."

Writing about his ministry during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ciccone described the challenge of sustaining purpose while managing his own health conditions — a heart condition and diabetes — and caring for his sister. He noted that the same communities he ministers to were among the hardest hit by the pandemic's disruptions to in-person support networks.

Law Enforcement Chaplaincy and Reentry Work

Ciccone serves as Police Chaplain for New Jersey Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 46, maintaining a pastoral relationship with the law enforcement community in which he spent two decades. The chaplaincy role reflects his effort to remain connected to that world rather than severing it — an acknowledgment that both the officers he once worked alongside and the people they arrest occupy his pastoral concern.

He is also listed as Support Services Lead Pastor for Evolution Reentry Services, an organization helping formerly incarcerated people rebuild their lives. He teaches online courses for the Jesuit Refugee Mission in Africa, extending his pastoral work internationally. Ciccone holds memberships in the National Spiritual Care Association and the International Council of Community Churches.

Podcast: Recalled to Serve

Alongside Rix Thorsell — his Union Theological Seminary classmate and fellow priest — Ciccone co-hosted "Recalled to Serve," a podcast also released under the title "From Police to Priest." The series explored what it means to be called, or called again, to service after a personal crisis or setback. The two shared an unusual parallel: both were ordained after significant professional ruptures, and the podcast drew on those experiences to discuss vocation, accountability, and what redemption looks like in practice.

Legacy

Joseph Ciccone's arc — from patrol officer to county sheriff to convicted official to ordained priest — is not a common one in American public life, and he's made it the backbone of his ministry. The career in law enforcement gave him standing inside a world that otherwise tends to wall itself off from the people it processes. His conviction put him on the other side of that wall. What followed, by his own account and by the account of those who work with him, has been an attempt to inhabit both positions honestly.

Those in the white-collar criminal justice world describe his willingness to speak openly about his own case as giving his pastoral work a credibility that distinguishes it from more conventional prison ministry. The mission-church model he built in Cliffside Park — meeting people where they are rather than asking them to come to an institution — extends that same logic into the structure of the ministry itself.

Personal Life

Ciccone has lived in Bergen County throughout his adult life. He serves as the primary caregiver for his sister, who has special needs, following the death of their mother. He has managed a heart condition and diabetes — chronic health concerns he has referenced publicly in writing about the demands of his ministry, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when in-person pastoral visits became difficult or impossible to sustain. In a 2020 essay, he described the compounding pressure of supporting vulnerable congregants while managing his own medical needs and his sister's care.