A native of France, Fr. Paul Anel (b. 1978) grad­u­ated with a degree in math­e­matics before joining Con-solatio in 1998. As a full-time vol­un­teer, he lived for two years in a favela near Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, reaching out to the poorest of the poor in a spirit of friend­ship and com­pas­sion. Profoundly changed by this expe­ri­ence, he started studying for the priest­hood. He got a degree in phi­los­ophy from the IPC (Paris). In 2005, he moved to Rome, where he got a bach­elor in the­ology from the Pontifical University Angelicum. In 2008, he moved to New York City in order to take part in Con-solatio’s mission and to initiate a new ministry among artists. Based in Brooklyn, he led an outreach pro­gram to the artist com­mu­nity, orga­nizing studio and gallery visits, art dis­cus­sions, and international residencies in France, Spain and the Ukraine. He was ordained a deacon in Brooklyn in 2009, and a priest in June 2010. As an expres­sion of his com­mit­ment to the artists, he cel­e­brated his first Mass in the Matisse Chapel, in Southern France. A year later, on the first anniver­sary of his ordi­na­tion, he celebrated Mass in the Rothko Chapel, in Houston, TX, and on 5th anniversary he presided the inaugural mass of Santa Cecilia, the chapel designed by Sean Scully in Montserrat, Spain. In 2019 he was named administrator of St Paul and St Agnes parish in the diocese of Brooklyn.