Pope Francis has appointed Fr Andrew Small, a British-born missionary priest, as the new secretary of the Holy See’s child protection commission.
Born in Liverpool in 1968, Fr Small’s expertise is in human rights and economic development in Africa and Asia and he has spent the last decade as National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States. As secretary to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, he will play a crucial role in the Church’s child protection and safeguarding efforts. He succeeds Monsignor Robert Oliver, who spent eight years in the post.
Fr Small, whose previous work saw him develop initiatives to fund child protection training across the global Church, said he was looking “forward to doing my part to help rebuild trust in a Church whose mission is to protect, support and love any and all, but especially those wounded by the Church’s ministers.”
In a separate interview with Vatican News, the new secretary explained: “I want to take my lead from them in listening to those whose lives have been impacted and, in many cases, cruelly broken because of abuse.”
The pontifical commission for child protection was announced by the Pope in 2013 as a way of tackling abuse and improving child protection. As a new Vatican entity, and not formally part of the Roman Curia administration, it has encountered turbulence and resistance with one of the commission members, Marie Collins, resigning in 2017. She cited resistance and lack of co-operation from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as the reason behind her decision to quit.
Fr Small takes up his post as secretary of the commission ahead of the publication of a new constitution of the Roman Curia. One draft of the constitution proposed establishing the Pope’s child protection body as part of the curia as a way to give it greater authority and make it more effective. One of the difficulties the commission has faced has been a lack of any legal status in the Vatican.
An Oblate of Mary Immaculate (OMI), Fr Small has served in parishes in Brazil and the United States and worked as the US Bishops’ Conference foreign policy advisor from 2004 to 2009. in 2010 he coordinated Church recovery efforts following the earthquake in Haiti.
He has law degrees from the University of Sheffield, the Georgetown University Law Center where he taught international law from 2006-09. He also has a doctorate in Theology from the Catholic University of America.
As the leader of the Pontifical Mission Societies, a position which is appointed by the Holy See, he helped develop a scholarship program for church workers in Africa and Asia at the Centre for Child Protection at Rome’s Gregorian University.
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