New priest takes the altar in Amenia

AMENIA — Father Andrew O’Connor celebrated his first Easter at the Church of the Immaculate Conception after arriving in February to serve the parishioners of Amenia, Pine Plains and Millerton.

In an interview with The Millerton News, he commented that Easter was a time to see whole families together and meet young people home from college or prep school. His busy schedule includes masses on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and another on Sunday night at Choate Rosemary Hall prep school when he visits his family in Connecticut.

Now that spring has arrived the new priest is enchanted by our rural landscape. “Sometimes I ask myself if I wandered into Austria.”

When asked why he was sent by the New York Archdiocese to Amenia, O’Connor mused that these decisions are never quite clear but that perhaps it was because of his fluent Spanish and love of Guatemala, or maybe his faith in the power of art. O’Connor is a visual artist who believes that the church and art nourish each other. He has a background in literature and the fine arts and is already making plans for a sculpture depicting the Ascension.

His book, “A Tuscan Résumé,” which is available at Oblong Books, describes a brief sabbatical in Florence studying sacred art. In 2000 Father O’Connor founded Sacred Art Heals, a Catholic not for profit, that fosters collaborative projects with local artists in parishes from Mississippi to Paris. His fashion line, Social Fabric, produces organic cotton with natural dyes in Central America for clothing made in the United States. Cameron Diaz modeled his linen shorts in a Vogue feature article.

Father O’Connor discovered his talent for learning languages at an early age — first French, then Spanish, Irish in Dublin, Italian and now he’s studying German. He became ordained in 1996 and served in parishes in the United States, Europe and Latin America. For the last ten years he was pastor of St. Mary’s Church in New York City’s East Village where he was part of a Lower East Side preservation effort. Here he is supportive of reopening St. Patrick’s church in Millerton.