Earl K. Fernandes
Earl Kenneth Mario Fernandes was born September 21, 1972, in Toledo, Ohio, to Catholic immigrants from India (his father from Mangalore, his mother from Goa). He earned a biology degree from the University of Toledo and completed two years of medical school at the University of Cincinnati before leaving to answer a call to the priesthood. He studied at Mount Saint Mary's Seminary of the West in Cincinnati and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati on May 18, 2002. He later earned a doctorate in moral theology (with a bioethics concentration) at the Alphonsian Academy in Rome.
As a priest he taught and served as academic dean at Mount Saint Mary's Seminary of the West (2008-2016), and from 2016 to 2019 served as a secretary at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C., under nuncios Carlo Maria Vigano and Christophe Pierre. He returned to Cincinnati in 2019 as a pastor. He is regarded as doctrinally orthodox and is an outspoken pro-life advocate.
On April 2, 2022, Pope Francis named Fernandes the 13th Bishop of Columbus, succeeding Bishop Robert J. Brennan, who had been transferred to Brooklyn. Fernandes was ordained and installed on May 31, 2022. He is the first bishop of Indian/South Asian descent to lead a U.S. Latin-Church diocese, the first person of color to head the Diocese of Columbus, and was the youngest diocesan bishop in the United States at his appointment. As bishop he has overseen a dramatic rise in seminarians and priestly vocations.
The crux for a Traditional Catholic is simple: after arriving in May 2022, did Bishop Fernandes suppress, move, cap, or preserve the Traditional Latin Mass in Columbus? The record is unambiguously one of preservation. Columbus's principal TLM home is the Oratory of St. Leo the Great, staffed by canons of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP). That oratory was established under his predecessor, Bishop Robert Brennan, who welcomed the Institute and presided at its opening Mass on October 2, 2020 -- the origin credit belongs to Brennan, not Fernandes. But the decisive fact is what Fernandes did with the inheritance: he kept it. There is no evidence he restricted, relocated, or curtailed the TLM anywhere in the diocese.
He went further than mere tolerance. On February 5, 2023 -- his first visit as bishop -- Fernandes offered Pontifical Assistance from the Throne at a Solemn High Mass for Candlemas at St. Leo's, before an overflow crowd of about 650, with Canon Matthew Talarico as celebrant. A bishop vesting and taking the throne at a Tridentine Mass is a public act of endorsement, not grudging accommodation. Structurally, St. Leo's is a non-parochial oratory, which shields it from Traditionis Custodes' ban on the old Mass in parish churches; Fernandes has let that arrangement stand rather than exploiting the motu proprio to shut it down.
His words match his deeds. Having celebrated the traditional Mass himself as a priest in Cincinnati, he flatly rejected the ideological framing behind the crackdown, calling the old Mass 'a beautiful part of the Church's tradition' offered to 'meet the pastoral need of the people.' Combined with his orthodoxy, his vigorous pro-life witness, and a vocations surge, the deeds-based verdict is that Bishop Fernandes is a friend of Tradition. The honest caveat: the flagship site is an ICKSP oratory he inherited rather than founded, and his most conspicuous pro-TLM acts date to 2023-2025 under a more permissive climate -- so the standard to watch is whether he would defend the TLM if pressured to restrict it. On the evidence to date, he has consistently chosen preservation over suppression.