David John Walkowiak
David John Walkowiak was born June 18, 1953, in East Cleveland, Ohio, of Polish descent. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Notre Dame (1975) and a Master of Divinity from Saint Mary Seminary in Wickliffe, Ohio (1979), and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Cleveland on June 9, 1979.
Walkowiak is first and foremost a canon lawyer. He earned a Licentiate (1984) and a Doctorate in Canon Law (J.C.D., 1987) from the Catholic University of America, and much of his priestly career was spent in canonical and academic roles: vice-chancellor of the Diocese of Cleveland, professor of canon law, associate judge on the diocesan court of appeals, and pastor. This canonist's temperament -- careful, precise, by-the-book -- marks the way he later governed as bishop.
Pope Francis appointed him the twelfth Bishop of Grand Rapids on April 18, 2013, and he was consecrated on June 18, 2013 (his 60th birthday). As of mid-2026 he remains the sitting Bishop of Grand Rapids; he turned 73 in June 2026 and has not reached the retirement age of 75, with no coadjutor or successor named.
The crux is Bishop Walkowiak's response to Traditionis Custodes, and here the record is documented. In a decree given at the Chancery on November 2, 2021, Walkowiak did NOT suppress the Traditional Latin Mass in Grand Rapids. Instead he granted an explicit dispensation from TC 3 2 -- the provision that forbids the old Mass in parish churches -- so that the diocese's existing TLM community could keep worshiping in its own parish church, Sacred Heart of Jesus, on any or all days of the year. He entrusted its pastoral care to that parish's pastor, allowed existing priests to keep their faculty on request, and permitted the older Rituale Romanum and Breviarium Romanum -- the traditional sacraments and Divine Office -- at Sacred Heart as well. That is a good deal more generous than the bare letter of Traditionis Custodes required.
Against that, the same decree tightened the screws everywhere else. Any 1962-Missal Mass celebrated outside Sacred Heart of Jesus must be offered without a congregation (a single server admitted only to satisfy Canon 906). Priests ordained after July 16, 2021 cannot obtain the faculty without prior consultation with the Apostolic See. There is no FSSP, ICKSP, or other traditional institute in the diocese; the surviving TLM is a diocesan-parish Mass, not an apostolate. The old rite was preserved, but it was frozen and boxed, not encouraged or expanded.
The verdict is a mixed record, tilting cautiously to the favorable side on deeds. Walkowiak is a canon lawyer who implemented Rome's harsh instrument in the least destructive way genuinely available to him: he kept the community intact, in its parish church, with the sacraments, when many bishops evicted their TLMs to gyms and chapels or extinguished them outright. But he is no champion of the movement -- there was no expansion, no ad orientem or altar-rail initiative on record, and every concession is framed as a tolerated dispensation for the spiritual good of the faithful rather than a positive embrace of the traditional liturgy.