Catching up With Father Andy Costello

Father Andy Costello, C.Ss.R., the son of Irish immigrants and youngest of four
children, grew up in Brooklyn, New York. There he attended Catholic grammar
school, altar served, and dreamed of becoming a priest. “Like a little kid who wants to
be an astronaut or a fireman or policeman. I wanted to become a priest.” You could say
living a holy life is a part of his family. His older sister became a nun, and he had three
aunts who were nuns as well.

Father Andy has a bigger-than-life personality that shines through despite some recent
health issues. He suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, but he zooms around with his walker
with little trouble. At lunch, he was telling jokes and wise cracking with his fellow
Redemptorists. “Did you hear about the one armed fisherman?” he asked the table,
“They said he caught one that was this big!” Lifting up a single arm in a failed effort to
show the length of the fish. He had plenty more where that came from!

His story about why he became a Redemptorist is a wonderful insight into the
humorous and good nature of Father Andy. “I was a parish priest, retreat house worker,
and novice master” he said when reflecting on his over 50 years as a Redemptorist. “But
I joined the Redemptorists to go to Brazil and never got there. I was in a classroom and
a priest came in and said, ‘we need (Redemptorist) priests for Brazil,’ so I joined!”
Writing has always been something that Father Andy has loved. In grammar school
he began his writing career by putting his stream of consciousness to paper. An exercise
he continues to this day. He was inspired by watching his father read and eventually by
some of his favorite writers, James Fenimore Cooper and Charles Dickens.

This passion for writing has made Father Andy a prolific scribe for decades. He has
published many books and was a regular contributor to US Catholic Magazine. Father
Andy just recently published his newest book, I Am a Catholic in Case of an Accident.
The title is a reference to holy cards or medals that many Catholics used to carry with
them in their wallets or pocketbooks. Father Andy believes that the title is a good hook.
“You have one second to hook people, one second, or less, at Barnes & Noble,” he said.
“What’s going to get them to grab this freaking book?”

“My nieces’ children have all dropped out (of the church),” Father Andy said when
asked about the writing of I Am a Catholic in Case of an Accident, “so how do I get them
to restart thinking about being a Catholic? And what about all the rest of the country?”
How do we as Catholics, clergy and lay people, begin to reach and reconnect with
those who feel like they do not belong in the Catholic church anymore? How do we
reintroduce Catholicism to people who no longer want to be a part of it?

One of Father Andy’s ideas for reconnecting people to the Catholic church is by just
simply talking to people. “20, 30, 40 years ago, I came with the idea, try to talk to one
person every day that you don’t know,” Father Andy explained. “I want to meet people
and find out who the hell they are!” He likes to do this anonymously by approaching
people not as a priest, or a Catholic, but as a fellow human being. He explained that this has helped him approach the worldwithout preconceived notions. “That’s just one of my goals in life, to talk to everybody.”

Father Andy has been writing his entire life and he has no interest in stopping. He mentioned to The Beacon that he has plenty of ideas down the pipeline that he is hoping to publish in the future. With a chuckle and his mischievous toothless smile, he joked, “I got my teeth pulled out. Some freaking guy pulled all my freaking teeth out! I gotta write about that! ” †