Frank Joseph Caggiano
Frank Joseph Caggiano was born on Easter Sunday, March 29, 1959, in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, New York, to immigrants from the Italian province of Salerno. He attended the Jesuit-run Regis High School in Manhattan, graduated summa cum laude from Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception (1981), and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn on May 16, 1987. He later earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Gregorian University in Rome (1996).
After parish and academic assignments in Brooklyn, Caggiano was appointed an auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn by Pope Benedict XVI on June 6, 2006, receiving episcopal consecration on August 22, 2006. On July 31, 2013, Pope Francis appointed him the fifth Bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut; he was installed on September 19, 2013.
In Bridgeport, Caggiano convened the diocese's fourth Synod (2014, the first in 32 years), became a prominent national voice on catechesis as chairman of the USCCB Subcommittee on the Catechism, and was a visible promoter of the National Eucharistic Revival and of youth ministry, serving repeatedly as an English-language catechist at World Youth Days. He remains Bishop of Bridgeport as of mid-2026.
Judged on deeds with dates, Bishop Caggiano's record in Bridgeport is unusually favorable to the traditional liturgy. Well before Traditionis Custodes, on the Feast of the Holy Rosary, October 7, 2017, he personally invited the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest to establish an oratory at Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church in Bridgeport, giving the diocese a permanent home dedicated exclusively to the traditional Mass and sacraments. That oratory remains fully active into 2026, offering a daily Latin Mass schedule under the Institute's canons.
When Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes on July 16, 2021, Caggiano did not suppress, cap, or relocate the traditional Mass. He asked pastors already offering the 1962 Missal to write to him for permission to continue, then in October 2021 issued a decree invoking Canon 87 to dispense from the motu proprio's more restrictive articles, letting existing celebrations proceed under his direct supervision and permitting use of the 1962 books for the Breviary, Penance, and public and private Masses. The independent tracker traditioniscustodes.info rates the Diocese of Bridgeport green, with the plain finding that no Traditional Latin Mass was suppressed.
The one genuine caveat is procedural: he required written permission rather than granting blanket protection, and his Canon 87 dispensation predated the February 2023 Roman rescript reserving that power to the Apostolic See. In practice, however, nothing was lost. The Institute's oratory (an ICKSP apostolate; there is no FSSP presence in the diocese) safeguards the traditional Mass institutionally, independent of shifting diocesan policy. Combined with his high-profile promotion of Eucharistic devotion and orthodox catechesis, the concrete record -- inviting a traditional institute, preserving every TLM site, and keeping them running years later -- marks Caggiano as a friend of Tradition.