Former R.I. Gov. Donald Carcieri, who served from 2003-2011, and his late wife Suzanne, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 78, were honored with a Lumen Gentium Award for Public Service for their decades of work to advance pro-life initiatives.
“At a time in our state’s history when we needed a courageous political leader to stand up for human life, Gov. Carcieri’s service to the pro-life cause goes back to his years in the Statehouse when he made an unexpected appearance at a pro-life rally and said, ‘You’re on the right side of this issue, you know that. There’s no debate on this issue,’” his nomination for the award stated. He would later co-author a 2019 bipartisan op-ed defending life.
Carcieri credits his strong faith for giving him the resolve to defend life.
“The Church was part of my life growing up,” said Carcieri, who grew up in East Greenwich behind Our Lady of Mercy Church. It is also where he first met his future wife, Suzanne, at a parish C.Y.O. meeting.
After college — he attended Brown University and Suzanne the University of Rhode Island — they married on June 19, 1965, two weeks after his graduation, one week after hers.
“I’m lucky I married above myself,” he smiled, noting how they had four children by the time they were 29: Matthew, Alison, Jill and Sarah, who’ve enriched the family with 14 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
“All during our early years, I was blessed, Suzanne was always so attuned to the family and the Church,” said Carcieri, who worked in business before retiring at 55 and running for governor at 59.
Living first in Newport, they were very involved in many programs offered in their parish, including the Christian Family Movement, Marriage Encounter and Action for Change.
Suzanne Carcieri boarded a bus to Washington, D.C., to attend the first March for Life in 1974 to uphold the rights of unborn children. She would go on to attend many such rallies in Washington. Later on, the family moved to Jamaica, West Indies, to work with Catholic Relief Services.
“Her time on earth was devoted to God through living a life full of faith, hope and love,” Alison Carcieri-Cassidy said of her late mother’s devotion to the pro-life activities of the Catholic Church, especially the Respect Life movement.
