Father Andrew

In 2005, Fr. Andrew created Goods of Conscience after a retreat in rural Guatemala. The original goal was to preserve the tradition of back-strap weaving which has in many ways become a lost art, since fewer and fewer people are clothed in traditional garments. Along with preserving this art form, Fr. Andrew sought to provide the weavers a living wage. This initial idea grew into what Goods of Conscience has become today; an apparel line that employs Mayan Indian weavers in Guatemala and underemployed sewers in the Bronx to produce clothing that looks good, feels good and does good.

Fr. Andrew is a Diocesan priest ordained by the Archdiocese of New York in 1996. His current assignment is at Holy Family in the Bronx, most famous as the parish of Jennifer Lopez. Previously he served for 6 years at Holy Trinity parish on the Upper West Side of New York. In addition to his service of the Archdiocese, he is also a visual artist and feels that religion and art go together like subject and verb, more so in modern times than ever before.

Fr. Andrew is the fifth of nine children from New Haven, Connecticut.  In 2000, he founded a non-profit organization, Sacredartheals, in order to collaborate with artists with whom he shared similar views. His projects have been tried and tested in Catholic parishes from Paris, France to Pascagoula, Mississippi.  As a result, the British Arts Council sponsored a documentary film on fellow artist Chris Knight’s work that included elements of his longstanding collaboration with Fr. Andrew over the years.  An experiment in using large scale video in liturgy, the film makers were in New York in March 2007 for a multimedia mass at Holy Trinity.