Donald J. Hying
Donald Joseph Hying was born August 18, 1963, in West Allis, Wisconsin, the youngest of six sons. He attended Marquette University and earned a Master of Divinity from Saint Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee on May 20, 1989. As a priest he served as a missionary in the Dominican Republic (1994-1998) and, in 2007, was named Rector of Saint Francis de Sales Seminary.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Milwaukee on May 26, 2011; he was consecrated July 20, 2011. Pope Francis named him the fourth Bishop of Gary, Indiana on November 24, 2014 (installed January 6, 2015), where he convened that diocese's first synod in 2017.
On April 25, 2019, Francis appointed Hying the fifth Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, succeeding the late Bishop Robert Morlino; he was installed June 25, 2019. He inherited a Madison diocese widely regarded as traditional-friendly and vocation-rich under Morlino, and has broadly maintained that inheritance. He remains the sitting Bishop of Madison as of mid-2026.
Hying inherited one of the most traditional dioceses in the United States. His predecessor, Bishop Robert Morlino, had made priestly vocations his top priority and had shaped a distinctly traditional culture: seminarians trained in the Traditional Latin Mass as well as the Novus Ordo, strong recommendation of celebration ad orientem, tabernacles relocated to the center of sanctuaries, encouragement of reception of Communion kneeling and on the tongue. Hying broadly maintained this inheritance rather than dismantling it.
On Traditionis Custodes his deeds are those of preservation within obedience. In July 2021 he publicly praised the graces the faithful draw from the old Mass, let priests presume continued authorization while he studied the motu proprio, and allowed existing Masses to continue at their regular locations. After a public-feedback period in January 2023, he designated four geographically spread sites for the Extraordinary Form effective July 1, 2023: St. Mary in Fennimore, St. Patrick in Janesville, St. Mary in Pine Bluff, and St. Cecilia in Wisconsin Dells. Consistent with the Roman directives, these are not the principal churches of their parishes. The four-site arrangement has continued through 2024-2025.
The record is therefore two-sided but net-favorable by the standard of the Traditionis Custodes era. On the friendly side: he preserved the TLM at four stable sites, voiced genuine esteem, and did not abolish it or force it into gymnasiums or chapels of the sort seen elsewhere. On the restrictive side: he did enforce Rome's limits -- requiring re-authorization, moving the Mass off parishes' main altars, and shifting from a broadly available older-form footprint to four designated locations -- and he disciplined the diocese's best-known traditional-leaning priest, though explicitly over politics rather than the liturgy. He is a bishop who kept faith with a traditional diocese while implementing an unfriendly Roman law with a pastoral hand: a qualified friend, not an adversary.