Rev. Andrew Small, OMI

Father Andrew Small has been a Catholic priest for over 25 years and has spent most of his ministry working in the area of global development in Latin America, Africa and Asia. He holds law degrees from Sheffield University, England (LL.B.) and Georgetown University Law Center, USA (LL.M.) where he taught international trade law from 2006-2009. He earned his doctorate in theology (S.Th.D.) from the Catholic University of America in 2010. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He began his ministry on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2000, next being assigned to Houston, Texas where he worked in a predominantly Hispanic-Latino parish. For eight years he worked in Washington DC, advocating for development and trade issues before the US Congress on behalf of the US Bishops’ Conference (USCCB), including giving testimony on trade before the US Senate Committee on Finance. In 2005, he represented the Holy See at the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, held in Hong Kong.

In 2011, he was appointed National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies by the Vatican with the goal of building up the Church’s outreach efforts to the growing populations in the Global South. He oversaw an annual national collection that cumulatively disbursed approximately $400 million to projects in Latin America, Asia and Africa from 2011-2021.

In 2021, he was appointed by Pope Francis to serve in the Vatican as the point person on preventing child sexual abuse within the Church with a focus on developing institutional structures that would reflect greater transparency and accountability in one of the world’s largest institutions. He initiated and secured funding for a network of training and compliance centers across Africa and Latin America that resulted in the publication of the Vatican’s first ever Annual Report on Church Policies and Procedures for Safeguarding.

In 2024, he returned to the US and resumed his role as President and CEO of Missio Invest, a social impact investment fund that he founded in 2018 with the goal of providing low-interest loans to Church-owned and operated small and medium-sized social enterprises in Africa. Supported by a variety of Catholic dioceses and congregations, Missio Invest received a $20 million investment from the US Development Finance Corporation in 2020. Originally from Liverpool, England, he became a US citizen in 2010. He speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.