Charles C. Thompson
Charles Coleman Thompson was born April 11, 1961, in Louisville, Kentucky. He earned a Bachelor of Accounting from Bellarmine College in Louisville, a Master of Divinity from Saint Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, Indiana, and a Licentiate of Canon Law from Saint Paul University in Ottawa. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Louisville on May 30, 1987, by Archbishop Thomas Kelly, and served as associate pastor, chaplain, tribunal judge, pastor, and, from 2008, vicar general of Louisville.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed him the fifth Bishop of Evansville on April 26, 2011; he was consecrated on June 29, 2011. Pope Francis appointed him the seventh Archbishop of Indianapolis on June 13, 2017, and he was installed July 28, 2017, at the time the youngest serving archbishop in the United States. He remains the sitting Archbishop of Indianapolis as of mid-2026.
As archbishop he is best known nationally for a 2019 dispute over Catholic identity at Jesuit- and archdiocesan-run high schools that employed teachers in same-sex civil marriages, and, in the liturgical sphere, for a comparatively non-restrictive implementation of Pope Francis's 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, under which the Traditional Latin Mass in the archdiocese was preserved rather than suppressed. He hosted the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in July 2024, at which a Traditional Latin Mass was celebrated.
On the specific question that matters most here -- what Archbishop Thompson actually DID with the Traditional Latin Mass after Traditionis Custodes (July 2021) -- his deeds are preservationist, not hostile. The tracking project traditioniscustodes.info records that NO Traditional Latin Masses were suppressed in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis under his December 14, 2021 response. He did not cap the number of TLMs, did not relocate them out of parish churches (a harsher option TC permitted him to take), and imposed no reported ad orientem, altar-rail, or sacrament restrictions.
The center of gravity is Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary parish in downtown Indianapolis -- a canonical personal parish for the traditional liturgy since 1998, a diocesan parish staffed by archdiocesan clergy (pastor Fr. C. Ryan McCarthy), NOT the FSSP or ICKSP. Its full Sunday schedule of 1962-Missal Masses continued uninterrupted, and Traditional Latin Masses there are held with the express permission of Archbishop Thompson. Reporting indicates the chancery assured the parish that 'nothing is changing' regarding the TLM. There is no FSSP or ICKSP apostolate in the archdiocese, so the TLM's survival rested entirely on the diocesan bishop's goodwill.
The friendly reading is reinforced by his hosting of the July 2024 National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, at which a Traditional Latin Mass was openly celebrated to an enthusiastic crowd. The honest caveats: the evidence is one of protection under pressure rather than active promotion -- his December 2021 letter framed the Novus Ordo as the unique expression of the Vatican II liturgy, and there is no public statement in which he champions the older rite on its own merits. Weighed by deeds and dates, in a period when many U.S. bishops restricted or eliminated the old Mass, Thompson left Indianapolis's Traditional Latin Mass intact -- which on a deeds-based standard reads as a friend of Tradition, with the qualifier that it is quiet toleration, not advocacy.