A Little About Me...

My name is Fr. Andrew Dernovsek, and I am a Catholic missionary priest for the Paris Foreign Mission Society (MEP). I have been sent on mission for life, ad vitam, to serve Christ and His Church in Madagascar, and I am from the Diocese of Pueblo, Colorado. I arrived in Madagascar in November of 2025, and I am currently studying the Malagasy language at the Catholic University in Antananarivo.
 

After earning a degree in International Studies from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 2006, I spent two and a half years serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho from 2007 to 2009. It was there that I first heard the call to become a Catholic missionary priest to the unreached in Asia—though at the time, I wasn’t Catholic!
 

After the Peace Corps, I came back home to the USA and I earned my Master’s Degree in International Administration from the University of Denver and served as the Executive Director of Universal Chastity Education (UCE) from 2010 to 2017. As the director of UCE, I worked with teams in Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, and the USA to share a message of faith, hope, health, and true love with thousands of young people. I became Catholic and received my first Holy Communion on February 8, 2015, and I began my journey toward the priesthood in 2017.
 

I completed all of my seminary studies in France, in the dioceses of Paris and Avignon, earning my degree from the Studium of Notre‑Dame de Vie. I was ordained a deacon on October 19, 2024, and a priest on September 6, 2025.
 

In my free time, I enjoy Eucharistic adoration, writing, reading, fishing, hiking, playing the guitar, horseback riding, and praising the Lord!