‘PRAY FOR ME’

‘Nicest’ TV Judge Frank Caprio Shares Pancreatic Cancer Battle

“I know this is a long road, and I’m fully prepared to fight as hard as I can,” he told his fans in an emotional video.

A Rhode Island traffic judge who’s garnered a legion of fans thanks to his compassion in the courtroom announced on Wednesday that he’s battling pancreatic cancer.

“I have been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas, which is an insidious form of cancer,” 87-year-old Frank Caprio, who starred in the reality show Caught in Providence, said in a video posted to his Instagram page, which has more than a million followers.

“I’m being treated by a wonderful team of doctors, both here in Rhode Island and at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. I pray that God guides their thoughts and their hands in their treatment of me.”

In the solemn message, Caprio asked his supporters to keep him in their thoughts and send prayers his way.

“I would ask each of you in your own way to please pray for me. I am in need of the power of prayer, which I believe in addition to medical treatment that I’m receiving, is the most powerful weapon to help me survive this,” he said.

The judge, whose empathetic rulings touched TV viewers and became a viral sensation online, was the chief judge of the Municipal Court of Rhode Island until his retirement earlier this year. He spent nearly 40 years on the bench.

“Not only in this country but around the world, I think that there’s a sense that the institutions of government are not meeting people‘s needs and that it's a very contentious society,” Caprio told the Daily Mail in 2017.

“I’m always mindful of the fact that the power of the sovereign as opposed to the power of the individual is so disproportionate. Shame on me if I represent the sovereign and I give someone something that they don't deserve. That’s a strict interpretation of the law.

“I take it to another extent. If I think there are certain circumstances in an individual’s life or it’s a close call, I give them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t subscribe to the theory that because you were charged you must be guilty.”

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Danika FearsFormer Senior Breaking News Editor

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