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O'Connor, 47, came up with the idea back in 2005 after traveling and working with impoverished citizens in Guatemala. He felt there must be a way to empower some of the people he met, and that's what does. Everyone who buys clothing from the online retail store is helping to support Guatemalan workers who are skilled in the lost craft known as back-strap weaving.

The clothes aren't cheap, nor should they be, considering the innumerable man hours that go into handcrafting the fabric. A simple T-shirt can cost $195 and a man's blazer $795, although there are some recession-friendlier items, like a cosmetic bag for $28 and ties that sell for $55. Guatemalan weavers create the fabric with a special reflective fiber that's impossible for other retailers to convincingly counterfeit. The fabric is then shipped to O'Connor's church, Holy Family in the Bronx, which, in case you're interested, is well known for being the parish of singer and actress Jennifer Lopez.

There, the fabric is weaved by underemployed seamstresses in New York and turned into clothing and accessories that are sold on their Web site. Meanwhile, every time an item is purchased at the site, a portion of the proceeds go toward paying local seamstresses to make school uniforms from the fabric, which are sent back to Guatemala, allowing kids to get an education while dressed in clothing that's part of their heritage.

In the process, as consumers purchase luxury clothing made from a dying art form, Guatemalan workers make money, New York seamstresses make money, O'Connor's church and its school makes money -- O'Conner himself, it should be noted, earns not a dime for his endeavors -- and everyone is happy.

O'Connor says he's trying to "support people by dignifying them. I think this is the deeper meaning of the word 'sustainability.'" Instead of "helping people a little bit and then leaving them high and dry," he adds, they get to be part of something ongoing and enduring.

O'Connor developed his business plan in 2005 after returning from Guatemala and being encouraged by a friend to enter a global social venture competition being sponsored by the Columbia University Business School. "That was helpful," says O'Connor, who didn't win the competition but did make it to the semi-finals. "We had to produce a business model and answer questions like, 'who are you trying to sell to,' and 'what's your [marketing] story?' I met with a lot of people who mentored us and talked realistically about the viability of the company."

As for its viability, so far, so good. O'Connor says the business has been growing slowly, and while the recession hasn't helped, it hasn't killed them either -- Goods of Conscience has been averaging $12,000 a month in sales. He also says that running a business and a parish isn't quite as dissimilar as you might think. With the clothing business, O'Connor is trying to convince potential customers to purchase products. With the church, O'Connor has to minister to his parishioners' needs (think: provide good customer service) and try to convince recession-weary churchgoers to put money in the collection basket.

If more priests were bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, O'Connor says there's no reason why we couldn't see more men of the cloth running their own mini-corporate empires. "There are a lot of churches with unused space and talented people," he says. "Absolutely, this business model could work anywhere."

Geoff Williams is a frequent contributor to Aol Small Business and the co-author of the new book Living Well with Bad Credit.