Artist Background

For 23 years, Dominican Father David O’Rourke has been the pastor of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church (est. 1902) in Point Richmond. After considerable work building up both the parish community and the beautiful historic property, he is retiring. Prior to Our Lady of Mercy, he was pastor in Benicia and in Berkeley where he worked for many years as teacher, family counselor, writer and editor. His most recent books include a memoir, “The Story of an Accidental Outsider,” and the cultural history, “How America’s First Settlers Invented Chattel Slavery.”

A graduate of Yale, Father O’Rourke received his theological degrees from the Dominican faculty at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and his clinical training at the Division of Family Study at University of Pennsylvania’s medical school. He is a Senior Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in Berkeley and Director of the Tatra Project, an educational program focused on the Baltic Republics.