By Florida Catholic staff - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | Before becoming a priest, Father Sergio García-Miro worked as a psychiatrist.

“As a doctor I can help people, and as a priest I will be able to help in an additional way,” he said in an interview prior to his ordination in 1978, at the age of 41.

Father García-Miró combined both professions during his 38 years of priesthood in the Archdiocese of Miami. He died June 10 at the age of 79.

A viewing will take place Tuesday, June 14, from 7 to 10 p.m. at St. Raymond Church, 3475 S.W. 17 St., Miami, followed by a funeral Mass at the church at 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 15.

Born March 23, 1937, Father García-Miró was the son of a cardiology professor at the University of Havana. He came to Miami in 1961 from his native Cuba, where he had been involved with Juventud Católica (the Catholic youth organization).

His departure from the island was precipitated by a visit “from six armed young men” who came looking for him at home. “Fortunately I had already hidden.”

He had studied with the Jesuits at Belen School in Havana and had been considering the priesthood since his youth.

“But I wasn’t sure,” he recalled in that same 1978 interview with The Voice, the archdiocesan newspaper at the time. “And they advised me to wait until I was. So I went ahead with my training and practice for a year to see if I still wanted to be a priest, knowing I could always use my medical training in the priesthood.”

After arriving in Miami, he became a resident counselor and instructor at Camp Matecumbe — now known as Boystown — where the archdiocese housed unaccompanied Cuban children who had been brought to the U.S. from Cuba.

In fact, he was an instructor of “the first and only graduating class of Matecumbe High School,” according to the newsletter of PedroPan.org, the organization for the 14,000-plus unaccompanied minors who arrived in the early 1960s via the Pedro Pan airlift.

In 2013, Father García-Miró celebrated a Mass at the 50-year reunion of the class.

After serving at Camp Matecumbe, Father García-Miro went to Spain and completed his medical studies at the University of Madrid. He returned to Miami in 1965 and began working at Baptist, Cedars of Lebanon and St. Francis hospitals.

He enrolled in the psychiatric program conducted jointly by Jackson Memorial Hospital and the Veterans’ Administration and became a licensed psychiatrist three years later.

He worked as staff psychiatrist at the University of South Florida in Tampa until 1973, when he entered the major seminary of St. Vincent de Paul in Boynton Beach.

He was ordained by Miami’s second archbishop, Edward McCarthy, March 18, 1978, and assigned as parochial vicar at St. John Bosco in Little Havana. From 1979 to 1981 he worked on the staff of the Metropolitan Tribunal (which processes marriage annulments).

From 1979 to 1991 he also served as parochial vicar at St. Joseph, Miami Beach. After taking a sabbatical in 1991 — during which he resided at St. Catherine of Siena in Miami — he was appointed to the staff of Catholic Community Services (now Catholic Charities) in 1992, with residence at St. Lawrence Parish in North Miami Beach.

He remained at St. Lawrence until his retirement from active ministry in May 2002.

Father García-Miró will be buried at Our Lady of Mercy Cemetery in Doral immediately following the funeral Mass. He is survived by a brother, nieces and nephews.