Father Andrew

In 2005, Fr. Andrew O'Connor 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.  Along with preserving this art form, Fr. Andrew sought to provide the weavers a living wage and an opportunity to work with rare heritage cotton. 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. 

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.