David John Malloy
David John Malloy was born February 3, 1956, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He earned a Bachelor of Science from Marquette University (1978), studied at Saint Francis de Sales Seminary, and was sent to the Pontifical North American College in Rome, where he earned advanced degrees in dogmatic theology and canon law. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee on July 1, 1983.
Malloy entered the Vatican diplomatic service, serving in the nunciatures of Pakistan and Syria and at the Holy See's UN mission, before joining the Prefecture of the Papal Household in 1998. In 2001 he became Associate General Secretary of the USCCB, and from 2006 he served a five-year term as General Secretary, overseeing the conference's day-to-day administration.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed him the ninth Bishop of Rockford, Illinois, on March 20, 2012; he was ordained and installed on May 14, 2012. He has chaired the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace and is regarded as a doctrinally conservative, administratively cautious figure. As of mid-2026 he is 70 and continues to govern the Diocese of Rockford, five years short of the customary retirement age.
The Diocese of Rockford entered Bishop Malloy's tenure as a genuine stronghold of the old rite. In 2007 his predecessor, Bishop Thomas Doran, canonically erected St. Mary in Rockford as a public oratory served by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP), a full sacramental home offering the sacraments according to the 1962 books. When Malloy succeeded Doran in 2012, he gave his approbation for St. Mary Oratory to continue as the spiritual home of the traditional faithful. That inheritance, and his decision not to dismantle it, is the strongest evidence in his favor.
The most consequential test came with Traditionis Custodes in 2021. Malloy's response was to preserve rather than suppress: the diocese stated that the 1962 Mass would be allowed to continue at the locations and by the priests as previously permitted. In practice the ICKSP oratory and the existing apostolate carried on. Measured against bishops who used the 2021 motu proprio to close communities outright, Rockford under Malloy kept its established Latin Mass alive, which is a real deed on the side of Tradition.
Against that stands his 2017 letter to priests, which required his personal permission for ad orientem celebration of the Novus Ordo and for any new Extraordinary Form Masses, and asserted diocesan control over altar rails and sanctuary changes. That directive clamped down on the organic growth of traditional worship and was read by traditionalists as contrary to the spirit of Summorum Pontificum. The pattern is consistent: Malloy protects what is canonically established and long-standing, but resists the spread of tradition beyond it and keeps tight personal control of the liturgy. Deeds-based, that is neither an enemy nor a champion, but a mixed record.