Francisco Robles Ortega
José Francisco Robles Ortega was born on 2 March 1949 in Mascota, Jalisco, the third of the sixteen children of Francisco Robles Arreola and Teresa Ortega de Robles. He studied humanities at the minor seminary of Autlán, philosophy at the seminary of Guadalajara, and theology at the seminary of Zamora, and was ordained a priest on 20 July 1976 for the diocese of Autlán; Spanish Wikipedia names Bishop José Maclovio Vásquez Silos as his ordaining bishop. After ordination he completed the licentiate in dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (1976-1979). As a priest he served as parochial vicar, chaplain for women religious, spiritual director and later rector of the minor seminary of Autlán, diocesan consultor, and vicar general of Autlán from 1985 to 1991. On the death of the bishop of Autlán in July 1990 he assumed the functions of diocesan administrator; the exact dates of that administration are not established, so it is not coded as a tenure.
John Paul II appointed him titular bishop of Bossa and auxiliary bishop of Toluca on 30 April 1991, and he was consecrated on 5 June 1991; Spanish Wikipedia names Bishop Alfredo Torres Romero of Toluca as principal consecrator, with José María Hernández González of Netzahualcóyotl and Javier Lozano Barragán as co-consecrators. After the death of Bishop Torres Romero he served as diocesan administrator of Toluca, and on 15 June 1996 he was appointed bishop of Toluca, taking possession on 15 July 1996. John Paul II appointed him archbishop of Monterrey on 25 January 2003; no Monterrey possession date has been established in the opened sources, so the Monterrey tenure is coded from the appointment date with that gap flagged, and the Toluca tenure closes on the same appointment date by the same fallback. Benedict XVI created him cardinal-priest of Santa Maria della Presentazione in the consistory of 24 November 2007. He was appointed archbishop of Guadalajara on 7 December 2011 and took possession on 7 February 2012, succeeding Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez.
As archbishop of Guadalajara he presided over the archdiocese through the implementation of Traditionis custodes (see Works). In June 2022 he was stopped at a roadblock in northern Jalisco by armed men who questioned him about his identity and destination before letting him continue, an episode he publicly recounted after the state governor questioned his account. He served as president of the Episcopal Conference of Mexico from November 2012 for two three-year terms (2012-2015 and 2015-2018), was president delegate of the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in October 2012, and participated as a cardinal elector in the conclaves of March 2013 and 2025. He is a member of the Dicastery for Evangelization and of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. He was appointed apostolic administrator of Colima on 23 December 2021, on the acceptance of Bishop Marcelino Hernández Rodríguez's resignation, and served until the toma de posesión of the new bishop of Colima, Gerardo Díaz Vázquez, on 13 July 2023, concurrently with Guadalajara. His motto is In simplicitate fidei ("En la sencillez de la fe"), from St Ambrose's treatise on faith.
- 2021-09-21By decree of 21 September 2021 he implemented Traditionis custodes in Guadalajara: the 1962-Missal Mass continues, with vernacular readings only, confined to Nuestra Señora del Pilar daily, one weekday Mass in the Cristo Rey chapel, and Sundays and Tuesdays at San Francisco Javier de las Colinas; no additional Masses may be added, with numbers to be reviewed case by case after the pandemic; FSSP house chapels have no archdiocesan permission for public worship; the San Pedro en Cadenas quasi-parish is canonically suppressed; and priests must seek case-by-case authorisation by handwritten request with three declarations on the reform, Vatican II, and the sole lex orandi. ↗
Cardinal Robles Ortega's record on the Traditional Latin Mass is defined by a single governing act: his decree of 21 September 2021 implementing Traditionis custodes in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara. The decree continued the 1962-Missal Mass but confined it: daily at the Church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, one weekday Mass in the Cristo Rey chapel, and Sundays and Tuesdays at San Francisco Javier de las Colinas, with readings alone in the vernacular in the CEM-approved Scripture translation. No additional Masses could be added, with numbers to be reviewed case by case once the pandemic ended. Celebrations in FSSP formation houses or other FSSP houses were left to Congregation for Religious guidelines, with no archdiocesan permission for public worship in those chapels, reserved to Society members in formation. The quasi-parish of San Pedro en Cadenas, erected under Summorum Pontificum by his predecessor Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, was canonically suppressed. Priests intending to celebrate with the 1962 Missal had to seek case-by-case authorisation by handwritten request, declaring that they did not exclude the validity and legitimacy of the liturgical reform, Vatican II, and the Magisterium, that the Paul VI and John Paul II books are the sole expression of the lex orandi, and that they would ordinarily celebrate with those books in the Eucharist and all other sacraments without exception, except where express extraordinary permission for the 1962 edition was given.
Two loose ends in the decree itself deserve note. The person responsible for celebration and pastoral care of the participating faithful was to be announced shortly; no opened source confirms who, if anyone, was subsequently named. And point 7 of the decree says other 1962 celebrations require case-by-case permission "only in the two assigned places," though point 3 names three venues. No later decree, permission list, dispensation, or softening by him was found through as_of, and no post-pandemic review of Mass numbers surfaced. Continued FSSP celebration at Pilar and San Francisco Javier in 2026, reported by Mission Tradition in October 2026, shows celebration under this regime, not a new permission or a restoration of the quasi-parish by him. No statement by him on the July 2026 Society of St. Pius X consecrations was found.