Ángel Luis Ríos Matos
Angel Luis Rios Matos was born on October 5, 1956, in Aguada, Puerto Rico. He began formation with the Secular Institute of the Missionaries of Charity Brothers, took a bachelor's degree in philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico in Ponce, and then a bachelor's in theology and a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogota, Colombia. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Mayaguez on January 11, 1985, by Bishop Ulises Aurelio Casiano Vargas. His episcopal motto is Con temor y temblor - with fear and trembling.
A canon lawyer by trade, he spent thirty-five years as a priest of his home diocese: parish vicar, administrator and pastor in several parishes; head of youth and vocational ministry; spiritual director of the Cursillos de Cristiandad; professor at the Interamerican University and lecturer in the law school of the Pontifical Catholic University; member of the College of Consultors; judge of the diocesan tribunal and finally its president; and, at his appointment, parish priest of San Sebastian Martir in San Sebastian.
On May 9, 2020, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bishop Alvaro Corrada del Rio and appointed Rios Matos to succeed him. He was consecrated and installed on August 1, 2020. Less than a year later his answer to Traditionis Custodes - a decree of prohibition issued the day after the motu proprio - made him, in the judgment of this project's earlier research, the one Puerto Rican ordinary with a documented TC-based prohibition of the older form.
- 2017-04-19Last contemporaneous record of the Protomartires, Aguada community found: Paix Liturgique's interview with Una Voce Puerto Rico president Edgardo Juan Cruz Ramos, describing a monthly Mass at Aguada served by two Capuchins and one diocesan priest, none mandated, for a congregation of 30 to 40. No record of the community after 2017 was found in the sources searched. Whether the community was still meeting when the July 2021 decree issued is therefore unestablished, and the site count for July 2021 is null. (The organizer's public calendar was consulted in October 2026 and agrees with this account; it is not cited as a source because a live feed is not stable.) ↗
- 2021-07-17Issued decree Prot. No. 062-OM-2021 implementing Traditionis Custodes, published on the diocesan website. On its stated premise that no communities in the diocese had asked for the older form, it (1) forbade clergy, religious and laity to promote the formation of such groups (citing Art. 3 s6); (2) designated no place and no priest for celebration according to the Missale Romanum of 1962 (Art. 2 ss3-4); (3) required every priest to use the Roman Missal in conformity with Vatican II even when celebrating privately and without a congregation, mandated the Gothic chasuble, and forbade the Roman chasuble, birettas, manteos, linen cloths, chalice veils, corporal burses, maniples and other ornaments or objects proper to that rite. The community whose Masses the decree forbade is last documented in April 2017 (Paix Liturgique interview with the group's president); no record of it after 2017 was found in the sources searched, so whether it was still meeting in July 2021 is unestablished, and the site count is therefore null rather than 1. Decree text retrieved Oct 2026 from the diocesan file host via the Wayback Machine; it confirms the contemporary reporting in every operative particular. ↗
Mayaguez had a documented older-form community before Traditionis Custodes. Paix Liturgique's April 2017 interview with Una Voce Puerto Rico president Edgardo Juan Cruz Ramos describes a monthly Mass at the Protomartires parish in Aguada, served by two Capuchins and one diocesan priest, none mandated, for a congregation of some 30 to 40; its survey (letter 83, May 2017) records the weekly Wednesday-noon Mass since the fall of 2016. No record of the community after 2017 was found in the sources searched. Whether the community was still meeting in July 2021 is unestablished.
On July 17, 2021 - one day after the motu proprio - Bishop Rios Matos answered it with a decree of prohibition (Prot. No. 062-OM-2021), published on the diocesan website. Its premise is that no communities in his diocese had asked for the older form; on that basis it forbade clergy, religious and laity to promote the formation of such groups, directed that no place and no priest be designated for celebration according to the Missale Romanum of 1962, ordered every priest to use the reformed Missal even when celebrating privately and without a congregation, and mandated the Gothic chasuble while forbidding the Roman chasuble, birettas, linen cloths, chalice veils, corporal burses, maniples and other ornaments or objects proper to that rite. No dispensation from Rome was sought. The decree forbade a form whose last documented celebration in the diocese was more than four years earlier; its premise - that no communities had asked - is wrong as history and unrefuted as a description of mid-2021.
The posture is therefore suppressed, and it is his own act that makes it so - but the confidence stays medium, not high, and the site count is left null, because the record does not show a Mass operating at the decree's date. What is suppressed beyond doubt is the permission itself: the decree, in the diocese's own primary text, forbade the form, designated no place and no priest, and mandated vestments for the reformed rite. The decree text was retrieved in October 2026 from the diocesan website's file host by way of the Wayback Machine, and it confirms the contemporary reporting (Gloria.tv, InfoVaticana, Religion en Libertad) in every operative particular. This project's prior Caguas research is not independent corroboration of any of this - it is the house citing itself - and is not relied on here.