George Leo Thomas
George Leo Thomas was born May 19, 1950, in Anaconda, Montana, and raised in Butte. He graduated from Butte Central Catholic High School (1968) and Carroll College in Helena (B.A., Literature, 1972), then studied for the priesthood at St. Thomas Seminary in Bothell, Washington (M.Div., 1976). He earned an M.A. in counseling (1983) and a Ph.D. in the mission history of the Pacific Northwest (1986), both from the University of Washington. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Seattle on May 22, 1976, by Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen.
Thomas was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Seattle on November 19, 1999, and consecrated January 28, 2000. Pope John Paul II named him Bishop of Helena, Montana, on March 23, 2004; he was installed June 4, 2004, and led that diocese for fourteen years, ordaining Stuart Long, the priest later portrayed in the 2022 film 'Father Stu.' Pope Francis transferred him to the Diocese of Las Vegas on February 28, 2018, and he was installed May 15, 2018.
On May 30, 2023, Pope Francis created the Ecclesiastical Province of Las Vegas, elevating the diocese to a metropolitan archdiocese and naming Thomas its first Archbishop. As of mid-2026 he remains the sitting Archbishop of Las Vegas. His pastoral emphasis has been on lay empowerment and parish collegiality; in a June 2023 interview he described Las Vegas Catholic life as flourishing amid the culture of the Strip.
On the deeds-based test, Archbishop George Leo Thomas comes out as a friend of the Traditional Latin Mass. When Traditionis Custodes landed in July 2021, many American bishops suppressed or curtailed the old rite; Thomas did not. The diocesan TLM continued through the 2021-2023 upheaval and carried on after Las Vegas became an archdiocese, with the archbishop stating in writing that maintaining access to it was 'an important value' to him as the diocese's chief liturgist.
The one asterisk is the 2023 relocation. In a May 1, 2023 letter, Thomas moved the Mass out of St. Bridget's parish to the Shrine of the Most Holy Redeemer effective Pentecost. Read charitably (and as he framed it), this was an upgrade: a stable, non-parish home that permitted confessions, Holy Week, movable feasts, and sacraments the old venue could not host. Read critically, it was also the minimum footwork needed to satisfy Traditionis Custodes' hostility to the old rite in parish churches, and it left the archdiocese with exactly one approved TLM site rather than a growing network. There is no evidence of an FSSP or ICKSP apostolate in the archdiocese; the approved Mass is diocesan, offered Sundays at 2:00 PM.
No public record was found of Thomas later restricting or revoking the Mass, nor of imposing ad orientem, altar-rail, or sacrament-reception rules on the ordinary form. His overall public posture is progressive-pastoral ('the spirit of Vatican II is alive and well'), not a champion of tradition by conviction; but his concrete acts toward the TLM community have been protective rather than punitive. Verdict: friend, deeds-based, with the caveat that his generosity operated inside, not against, the framework of Traditionis Custodes.