On a Lenten afternoon, Father Andrew More O’Connor pulled into the parking lot of St. Anthony’s Church in Pine Plains in a small green Fiat 500. Dressed in black, he stepped out of the car carrying a vase of white lilies. He set them down briefly as he unlocked the sanctuary door.
Inside, he placed the flowers at the feet of a simple statue of the Blessed Mother. Around him, the sun illuminated the crimson and sapphire glasswork of saints and angels — a quiet interplay of color and light that echoed his own devotion to beauty, form, and meaning.
It was a moment of simple ritual. But like much about O’Connor, it held deeper meaning — a blending of the practical and the poetic, the sacred and the creative.
Before arriving in Pine Plains, O’Connor’s path took him across continents and disciplines. He studied fresco painting in Florence, served the Catholic community in New York City, went on a mission in Guatemala, founded a sustainable fashion line in the Bronx, wrote a book in Tuscany, and saw his handmade linen shorts featured in a Vogue shoot for Cameron Diaz.
He speaks six languages and refers to himself, half-jokingly, as the “Navy SEAL priest,” dispatched wherever the Archdiocese of New York needs him most.
A spiritual awakening atop Knocknarea
O’Connor’s path traces back to a formative moment when he was 18 years old. He left his home in New Haven, Conn., with little more than a backpack and a one-way ticket to Ireland. He had heard stories about the land of his ancestors — a place of windswept fields and rugged stone ruins — but needed to see it for himself.
Once there, he hitchhiked west to County Sligo, arriving at the Ox Mountains, a sparsely populated stretch of countryside. He told a driver he was going to visit his relatives. The driver shook his head: “There’s nobody there anymore,” he said. “They all died or moved away.”
Still, O’Connor insisted on being dropped off in the remote region; he walked into the hills, spending the night alone beneath a sky that never quite darkened, in the long light of an Irish summer. At dawn, he climbed Knocknarea, a fabled hill where Queen Medb, the legendary warrior queen of Connacht, is said to be buried beneath a Neolithic cairn.
“That was my religious experience,” he said. “I said yes to God — to whatever was going to come.”
That quiet but resounding affirmation has shaped his life of art, craftsmanship, and faith ever since. It carried him through years of theological and artistic study in New Hampshire, Rome, Florence, Texas, and Ireland. He studied literature and poetry, pursued sacred art, and briefly joined a Dominican novitiate. Ultimately, he was called to the Archdiocese of New York which eventually, as life, or God, would have it, brought him to Pine Plains.
A life of service and study
In February, O’Connor began a six-year assignment as pastor of a tri-parish community in northeastern Dutchess County. His appointment includes St. Anthony’s in Pine Plains, St. Patrick’s in Millerton, and the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Amenia. Combined, the parishes serve 587 worshippers, including many who are elderly or homebound. While the role is demanding, it offers O’Connor, who resides in a rectory in Amenia, what he calls a rare opportunity to “plant roots.”
“The bishop didn’t look at my résumé and say, ‘I want you to go to Pine Plains.’ It was just — I need somebody in Pine Plains. It’s more military than human resources.”
Though new to the town, he quickly found surprising links to the community.
“I had never been to Pine Plains. But the woman who plays the organ here, her brother, is my classmate in the priesthood, and she’s married to a man whose sister my brother used to date. So there are connections.”
Born in Evanston, Ill., and raised in New Haven, O’Connor is the fifth of nine children. His father was a scientist, his mother an artist. His appreciation for beauty and structure, he said, is inherited.
O’Connor graduated from Thomas More College in Merrimack, N.H., in 1985 and later attended seminaries in Yonkers and Huntington, N.Y., before being ordained by the Archdiocese of New York in 1996. “I studied theology, literature, and art. I have a strong love of Ireland and Irish poetry because I went there when I was 18,” he said. “I do the Mass each year in the Irish language.” In addition to Gaelic and English, he also speaks Spanish, French, Italian and German.
Since his ordination, O’Connor has primarily served in parishes in New York City but has often been called into difficult or transitional assignments. “I’ve been going kind of clockwork as the Navy SEAL priest of the diocese — where they drop me in and say, ‘Help out in this parish, this parish is sick.’ So I’ve gotten to know the Hudson River Valley.”
Integrating the arts into parish life
In 2023, after leaving St. Mary’s Church on the Lower East Side, he took a sabbatical in Italy to study fresco painting and to complete a long-conceived book of theology and art, titled “A Tuscan Resume” — published by Mandragora in 2024. “The book is mostly paintings and sketches, but I wrote an essay,” he said. “You can open it to any chapter.”
For O’Connor, art and spirituality are deeply connected. “The spirit needs to be embodied,” he said. “That is divine. There’s no way to escape it.”
Beyond the canvas and pulpit, O’Connor has also left his mark in the world of sustainable fashion. In 2007, he founded Goods of Conscience, a clothing line that paired artisanal Guatemalan weaving with garment-making workshops in the Bronx. His goal was not just to produce ethically sourced clothing but also to rekindle the dignity of skilled labor.
The project reached national prominence when Vogue called in a frenzy, seeking last-minute alternatives for a Cameron Diaz shoot. The actress wouldn’t wear synthetics. “So they came up to the Bronx and said, ‘Can we have your consent? We’ll take this out to L.A.,’” O’Connor recalled. His linen shorts made the cut.
Though the business shuttered during the pandemic, O’Connor says it could be revived locally: “It could be easily done in the basement here. Let’s just set up some sewing machines.”
He is already thinking of ways to integrate the arts into parish life in Pine Plains, including potentially transforming the property adjacent to the church into a sculpture garden. “I have large sculptures in New York City, including a 30-foot piece in Chinatown, and bronze doors,” O’Connor said. “I’d love to do sculpture here — maybe temporary installations.”
His arrival in the parish has sparked interest and admiration. The sign outside St. Anthony’s announces Mass times and welcomes parishioners — many of whom say O’Connor’s presence has brought renewed energy.
Elyse Harney, a parishioner based in Millerton is excited about O’Connor’s presence in the community. “It’s a difficult job to take care of three parishes,” she said. “O’Connor is very open and eager to fill the spiritual needs of our area. And I think it’s wonderful.”
“Father O’Connor seems to have a very deep knowledge of history that he just rattles off and relates to his homily,” said Jackie Reynolds, a parishioner at St. Anthony’s. “With his depth of knowledge about a lot of stuff — you can see that we are going to be blessed by his presence. Usually, they say, ‘Oh, you need a short homily’ — in theory — unless it’s really well done. We could all sit there and listen to Father O’Connor for a very long time, fully engaged.”
Even in quiet moments after Mass, he makes an impression. Reynolds recalled seeing him with a parishioner washing the sacred vessels.
“He says to her, ‘As I’m placing that over the chalice, I contemplate the cloth that Christ removed from his face at the resurrection.’ And I’m thinking, holy—! Not everybody speaks like this. He brings to us all of this well of spirituality that is available, yet we don’t know it, because we haven’t had someone who speaks like that that to us.”
