Edgar Moreira da Cunha
Edgar Moreira da Cunha was born August 21, 1953, in Nova Fatima, Bahia, Brazil. As a teenager he entered a Vocationist minor seminary, professing first vows to the Society of Divine Vocations (Vocationists, S.D.V.) in 1975 and perpetual vows in 1979. He studied philosophy in Brazil and theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary in Darlington, New Jersey, and was ordained a priest for the Vocationist Fathers on March 27, 1982, in Newark.
As a Vocationist priest da Cunha served for roughly 18 years at St. Nicholas Parish in Palisades Park, New Jersey, and later as master of novices; as pastor of St. Michael's Parish in Newark he began a Portuguese-language Mass for Brazilian immigrants. On June 27, 2003, Pope John Paul II named him auxiliary bishop of Newark; he was consecrated September 3, 2003, becoming the first Brazilian-born Catholic bishop in the United States. In Newark he later served as vicar for evangelization and vicar general.
Pope Francis appointed da Cunha the eighth Bishop of Fall River on July 3, 2014, and he was installed at St. Mary's Cathedral on September 24, 2014. He shepherds roughly 240,000 Catholics across southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and the Islands. As of mid-2026 he remains the sitting Bishop of Fall River. His liturgical profile is that of a mainstream Novus Ordo pastor rather than a promoter of the traditional liturgy.
Bishop da Cunha's record on the traditional liturgy is genuinely mixed, and the fairest reading is deeds-based. When Traditionis Custodes landed on July 16, 2021, many U.S. bishops immediately suppressed or froze their Traditional Latin Masses. Da Cunha did not. The diocese stated that the Mass already approved and regularly celebrated at St. Francis Xavier in Hyannis would continue to be offered. In a small diocese with only one TLM community, choosing preservation over suppression was a friendlier posture than that taken in many neighboring sees.
The qualifier is that the Mass was subsequently relocated. As of 2025-2026 the diocese's sole Traditional Latin Mass is offered not in a parish church but at Sacred Heart Chapel in Yarmouth, a chapel attached to St. Francis Xavier Parish, Hyannis: a Sung Mass every Sunday and a Low Mass on the First Saturday. Moving the Mass out of a parochial church is precisely what Traditionis Custodes demands, so this reads as lawful compliance rather than hostility, but it also caps and contains the traditional community rather than growing it. There is no FSSP, ICKSP, or other traditional-institute presence anywhere in the diocese, and no diocesan promotion of the older rite.
On the wider markers of a tradition-friendly bishop, the record is thin to absent. There is no evidence of da Cunha mandating or encouraging ad orientem celebration, restoring altar rails, or issuing sacramental directives favoring traditional practice; his liturgical energy has gone into the Novus Ordo National Eucharistic Revival and into cultural-diversity and immigrant apostolates. The net verdict is a mixed record: he protected the one existing TLM when he could have killed it, which earns real credit, but he is a mainstream Vocationist pastor, not an ally or promoter of the traditional movement. He is not a persecutor, and he is not a friend of Tradition in the fuller sense.