Father Connolly Runs NYC Marathon, Raises $135,000

Father Seán Connolly ran his first New York City Marathon on Sunday, 1 November 2026, as part of a 22-strong Team Catholic Charities that raised a record-breaking $135,000 for New Yorkers in need. The priest, who has served the Archdiocese of New York for 11 years, offered each of the 26 miles as a prayer, and the team beat its $100,000 goal by more than a third.

Running a marathon is hard enough. Running one as a parish priest, with a congregation praying for you back in Riverdale, and with every mile carrying the name of someone who needs a meal, is something else entirely. Connolly treated it that way from the start.

Father Sean Connolly Runs NYC Marathon for Catholic Charities

Connolly is pastor of St Margaret of Cortona–St Gabriel Parish in Riverdale, in the Bronx. Before that he served at a parish in Manhattan's East Village, and at both places he worked alongside Catholic Charities of New York, hosting pop-up food distributions for families who needed help.

That firsthand experience is what drew him to the marathon team. He had seen what the organisation does up close, and running 26.2 miles through the five boroughs was his way of answering it. The night before the race, he delivered the homily at the Marathon Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral, preaching to runners and supporters the evening before they set out.

In his homily he quoted the words of Jesus from Matthew 25:40: "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." He told the congregation that the marathon was an opportunity to answer that call, and to invite others to join in making a difference in the lives of those in need.

Team Catholic Charities Breaks Marathon Fundraising Record

The team gathered on the morning of 1 November in Staten Island, alongside more than 61,500 athletes, to start the TCS New York City Marathon. By the end of the day, all 22 runners had completed the 26.2-mile course, and their fundraising total had passed $135,000, a record for the team.

Much of the money will support efforts to provide food to families, including Thanksgiving meals later in November. That timing matters: the marathon fell at the start of the month when food banks see demand rise sharply, and the record total means more tables will have a turkey on them this year.

Catholic Charities of New York says the money will also support its wider work with the city's most vulnerable people, including help for the homeless, at-risk children and families, and people facing unemployment, illness and disability. The marathon total is a small part of that work, but for the families who eat because of it, it is not small at all.

Priest Offers Each of 26 Marathon Miles as a Prayer

Connolly's promise to offer each mile as a prayer gave the run a shape that a stopwatch never could. Twenty-six miles, twenty-six prayers, each one carried past the crowds and the cheering and the ache in his legs. It is an old priest's way of running: the body does the work, and the prayer does the rest.

He also described the marathon as a chance to reconnect with a longtime passion for running, and to challenge himself physically and spiritually at the same time. An ancient sermon can still speak today, as reported in 1,600-Year-Old Papyrus May Hold Lost Sermon on Jesus, and for Connolly the discipline of training fed the same purpose as the fundraising. The two are not seperate for him.

Stories of faith taking physical form have a way of catching people's attention, as reported in Chase Rice: I Choose Jesus After Childhood Abuse Trauma, and a priest running a marathon for the hungry is the kind of story that travels. It is also the kind of story that reminds a city that its churches are still in the streets, not only in the pews.

Church attendance in the United States has been edging upward after decades of decline, as covered in US Church Attendance Rises 65 to 70 After 25 Years, and small acts of public faith like this one may be part of the reason. People notice when a priest laces up his shoes and runs for someone else's dinner. England is seeing its own signs of new life, as reported in John Armitage Sees England's Third Spring of Faith, and testimonies of lives turned around keep inspiring believers, as covered in Palesa Madisakwane: I Was in Hell Before Returning to Faith.

What the $135,000 Marathon Total Will Do Next

The money is already at work. Catholic Charities says much of it will go toward food, including the Thanksgiving meals that land later this month, and the rest will support its year-round work with New Yorkers in need. For a team that set out hoping to raise $100,000, the extra $35,000 is not a rounding error — it is hundreds more meals.

Connolly has finished his first marathon, but the work it funded has only just begun. The food distributions he once hosted at his own parishes will keep going, and the families who depend on them will not know his name. They will only know that someone ran 26 miles so they could eat, and that, for a priest, is probably the whole point.

Whether he runs again next year is still unknown, and the team is already inviting runners for 2027. What is certain is that a record was broken on 1 November, and that it was broken by 22 people who decided that running through New York was worth doing if it meant feeding it too.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.