Father LaMorte was born in Mount Vernon, and grew up in the parish of Saint Anthony in the Northeast Bronx. He was trained at Saint Anthony as an altar boy, and spent a year at the minor seminary, Cathedral College High School in Manhattan, before switching to a neighborhood Catholic high school, Mount Saint Michael Academy, from which he graduated. He then went to St. John’s University for college and became a member of the New York Air National Guard upon graduation, where he served first as an enlisted member of the 105th Airlift Wing at the Westchester County Airport, working in base supply.
After teaching junior high school social studies and Language Arts for four years at Our Lady of Solace Parochial School in the Morris Park section of The Bronx, he came across an article about what would have been his original ordination class from Cathedral College, the class of 1976. Taking this as a sign, he applied for and was accepted at Saint Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie on September 8, 1977 and was ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Cooke on October 31, 1981 – his father’s 61st birthday.
Promoted to first lieutenant after ordination, he was appointed as the Catholic chaplain at McGuire AFB in New Jersey from 1982 to 1994. Until his retirement in 2012, Lieutenant Colonel LaMorte served as the Wing Chaplain of the 105th AW, a unit of 1,500 men and women, most of whom are Roman Catholic.
In August of 1985, Cardinal O’Connor appointed Father LaMorte to the archdiocesan Parish Mission Team. The PMT was a group of twenty priests, religious sisters and laymen and women who would travel about the archdiocese conducting weeks of parish renewal, or “missions”. He also earned a Master’s degree in pastoral counseling in 1989 from Iona College.
In October 2010, Cardinal Dolan appointed him as the seventh pastor of the Church of St. Gregory Barbarigo in Garnerville and he also served as the chair of the Archdiocese of New York’s presbyteral council.
In December 2018, Father LaMorte was installed as Vicar General and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York.
