Francis Ignatius Malone
Francis Ignatius Malone was born September 1, 1950, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the fourth of nine children. He studied at the University of Dallas, earning a Bachelor of Arts in history (1973) and a Master of Divinity and Master of Education (1977), and later a Licentiate in Canon Law from the Catholic University of America. He was ordained a priest on May 21, 1977, for the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas, where he served for 43 years.
For most of the two decades before his episcopal appointment he was pastor of Christ the King parish in Little Rock, and he became known across Arkansas chiefly for his promotion of priestly vocations and of Eucharistic adoration. Arkansas Catholic described him as a diocesan 'treasure' at the time of his appointment.
On November 19, 2019, Pope Francis named Malone the third Bishop of Shreveport, Louisiana. He was ordained and installed on January 28, 2020. As of a March 2026 interview he was 75 and still leading the diocese, which counts about 38,000 Catholics across 27 parishes and 10 missions. In 2020 he advanced the cause of canonization of the 'Shreveport Martyrs,' priests who died serving victims of the 1873 yellow-fever epidemic.
The Traditional-Latin-Mass record in the Diocese of Shreveport under Bishop Malone is thin, and what exists points against Tradition by deeds. Before Traditionis Custodes the diocese had at most an occasional Extraordinary-Form or Latin sung Mass at the Cathedral of St. John Berchmans; a Latin Missa Cantata was still on the cathedral calendar for the Solemnity of All Saints, November 1, 2021. There is no evidence of any FSSP, ICKSP, or other traditional-institute presence in the diocese, and no diocesan parish is publicly listed as a standing TLM site.
After Traditionis Custodes (July 16, 2021), Shreveport gave no public response -- it appeared as 'N/A' in the national diocesan surveys -- and the one venue that had offered a Latin Mass, the Cathedral of St. John Berchmans, is now marked by the Latin Mass Directory as having its Traditional Latin Masses 'reported as canceled.' By June 2024 local Catholics were reduced to petitioning the bishop merely for a weekly Latin Novus Ordo celebrated ad orientem -- a request that, on the public record, went unanswered. No decree, dispensation, designated site, or accommodation for the Vetus Ordo under Malone has been documented.
Weighed on deeds rather than words: Malone is by background a reverence-minded pastor (vocations, Eucharistic adoration, the Shreveport Martyrs cause), and there is no evidence of a harsh or ideological crackdown from him personally. But there is also no tradition-friendly deed on the record -- no TLM provision, no public defense of it, and a canceled cathedral Latin Mass during his tenure while even a Latin Novus Ordo petition drew no response. On the site's deeds-based standard that adds up to an unfavorable record, with the honest caveat that the underlying file is genuinely sparse and no formal suppression decree from him has been located. He has not persecuted the old Mass; he has simply provided nothing for it.