Edward Weisenburger
Edward Joseph Weisenburger was born on December 23, 1960, in Alton, Illinois, and raised in Lawton, Oklahoma. Ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City on December 19, 1987, he trained as a canon lawyer and served as a chaplain in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, ministering at the site of the Murrah Building. Pope Benedict XVI named him Bishop of Salina, Kansas, in February 2012, and he was ordained a bishop on May 1 of that year.
In October 2017 Pope Francis translated him to Tucson, Arizona, where his diocese spanned the entire Arizona-Mexico border and his ministry centered on the reception of migrants and asylum-seekers; at the bishops' 2018 assembly he suggested that Catholics carrying out the family-separation border policy might face canonical penalties, including the withholding of Communion. On February 11, 2025, Francis named him the sixth Archbishop of Detroit, succeeding Allen Vigneron, and he was installed on March 18, 2025.
Within weeks of arriving in Detroit he turned to the Traditional Latin Mass. Citing the Holy See's reservation of parish-church permissions to itself, he declined to renew the permissions under which at least ten parishes had offered the old Mass every Sunday, ordered those celebrations to cease by July 1, 2025, and confined the rite to four designated non-parish sites, one in each region of the archdiocese. He has also become a prominent national voice against immigration enforcement, asking whether the nation is losing its very soul.
- 2025-04-16Announced to his priests (archdiocesan update, reported April 16, 2025): the prior permissions for the TLM in parish churches expire July 1, 2025 and 'cannot be renewed', the Holy See having reserved permission for a parish church to itself. St. Joseph Shrine would continue, and one non-parish site in each of the archdiocese's four regions would be designated. ↗
- 2025-06-12Decree (Prot. N. CS25-0137) promulgating implementation norms: from July 1, 2025 the public celebration of the TLM is confined to designated non-parish sites, and permissions at all other sites expire June 30, 2025. The same norms also reached into the Ordinary Form, banning ad orientem celebration and requiring freestanding altars (see beyond). ↗
- 2025-06-13Pastoral letter naming the four regional sites, effective July 1, 2025: St. Joseph Shrine, Detroit (Central Region); St. Irene, Dundee (South); Our Lady of Orchard Lake Chapel, Orchard Lake (Northwest); St. Joseph, Port Huron (Northeast). 'Permission for this celebration at all other sites will expire on June 30, 2025.' ↗
- 2026-09-01Reported amendment to the June 2025 decree, dated September 1, 2026: a lay parishioner's inquiry to the Holy See produced the text of an amendment withdrawing the blanket ban on ad orientem in the Ordinary Form and reserving to the archbishop personally the capacity to grant permission to individual priests to use the ad orientem posture. The archdiocese has not published the amendment, and its own paper, Detroit Catholic, has not reported it. ↗
- 2021In his response to Traditionis Custodes he confirmed the Oratory in place: he said 'I do not envision any changes' to the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass at St. Gianna Oratory, describing the community as in full communion with the Church and functioning under his supervision, and praising the ministry and worship there. No decree, no new conditions and no site changes followed at any point in his tenure. ↗
Archbishop Weisenburger had scarcely been installed in Detroit before he turned to the Traditional Latin Mass — and turned it out of the parishes. Citing a 2023 Vatican clarification that reserved to Rome the power to permit the old rite in a parish church, he chose not to seek that permission, and ordered the parish Latin Masses of the archdiocese to cease by July 1, 2025. At least ten parishes had offered the ancient Mass every Sunday; in their place he designated just four non-parish 'regional sites.' The older rite was not abolished, but it was evicted from those parishes where it had taken root — turned out of the ordinary life of the archdiocese and pushed to the edges of the map.
It must be said clearly where the responsibility lies. The restrictive framework was begun by his predecessor, Archbishop Vigneron, under Traditionis Custodes; but the decisive act of 2025 — the refusal to renew, the removal of the Mass from the parishes, the consolidation to four sites — is Weisenburger's own. He could have sought to keep the Mass in the parishes. He did not.
A bishop is free to spend his energies as he judges best. That a new archbishop, in his first season, would make the curtailing of the ancient Mass an early order of business tells the traditional Catholic what he needs to know. Four sites are better than none, and we say so. But this is the record of a shepherd narrowing the door to the Mass of Ages, not widening it — and on that question he is no friend.