Dennis E. Spies
Dennis Edward Spies was born on March 5, 1968, in Clifton, Illinois, into a farm family, and grew up working the land. He earned a bachelor's degree in agriculture-business economics from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 1990, served as a team leader with the National Evangelization Team missionary movement, and ran a soybean business on the family farm before entering the seminary. He studied at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, receiving a Master of Divinity and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 2002.
He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Joliet on June 1, 2002, by Bishop Joseph Imesch at the Cathedral of Saint Raymond Nonnatus in Joliet. His early assignments were as associate pastor at Saint Walter in Roselle and Saint Mary Immaculate in Plainfield, then as pastor of three small parishes at once, Our Lady of Lourdes in Gibson City, Saint George in Melvin, and Immaculate Conception in Roberts. Later pastorates took him to Saint Liborius in Steger, Mother Teresa Catholic Academy in Crete, and Saint Mary in Park Forest, and he served on the diocesan presbyteral council.
From 2016 to 2024 he served on the formation faculty at Mundelein Seminary as director of pre-theology and the parish internship program. Bishop Ronald Hicks named him vicar for clergy on July 1, 2024, and Pope Francis appointed him an auxiliary bishop of Joliet on September 27, 2024; he was consecrated on November 6, 2024. When Hicks took possession of New York on February 6, 2026, Spies became apostolic administrator of Joliet three days later, and he still held both roles in October 2026.
Dennis Spies has no recorded posture on the 1962 Missal, because no governing act of his own on it has been found in either of his capacities. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of Joliet in September 2024, more than three years after Traditionis Custodes, and he became apostolic administrator in February 2026, after the vacancy created by Bishop Ronald Hicks's move to New York. Searches for a statement, decree, permission, appointment, or letter of his on the old Mass in 2024-2026 returned nothing attributable to him, so both of his tenures are filed no_record at medium confidence: absence searched for, not assumed.
What exists in Joliet is an inheritance, and it belongs to Hicks, not to Spies. The July 2021 Catholic News Agency tracker recorded no Joliet response to the motu proprio, and the diocesan board row records the Hicks era as preserved at medium confidence, saying Hicks complied quietly but shielded the communities and that one community became a personal parish for the old rite. That personal-parish claim rests on the board row alone and was not independently verified from a fetched source in this pass, and no diocesan count of 1962-Missal sites was found, so both site counts stand at null. Spies administers whatever provision Hicks left; he has not been shown to add to it, reduce it, or rule on it.
One correction matters for the record and is stated openly in the research note: Spies was not elected diocesan administrator by the College of Consultors. Every source that names his office calls him apostolic administrator, appointed by the Holy See, with February 9, 2026, as the start date, three days after Hicks took possession of New York. The brief's premise of an election does not survive the sources, so the administrator tenure is filed as an appointment, not an election, and the integrator should not re-label it without a source that actually shows an election. A future governing act of Spies's own on the 1962 Missal, or a verified count of Joliet sites, would be the only things that could move either tenure off no_record.