Jacques E. Fabre
Jacques Eric Fabre-Jeune was born on November 13, 1955, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, one of six children, and immigrated to New York City while still in high school. He joined the Missionaries of St. Charles, the Scalabrinians, taking first vows in 1982, and was ordained a priest in Brooklyn on October 10, 1986. His early ministry followed the order's charism for migrants and people on the move: he served in Florida, spent 1991 to 1992 as chaplain to Haitian refugees at Guantanamo Bay, and then led a parish in San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic from 1992 to 2004.
After a period in Rome working on human mobility, he came to Georgia in 2006, serving as parochial vicar in Athens and Peachtree City before becoming administrator of San Felipe de Jesus Mission in Forest Park, in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, where he remained for some thirteen years. He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Creole, and in Atlanta he served as Scalabrinian local superior.
On February 22, 2022, Pope Francis named him the fourteenth Bishop of Charleston, succeeding Robert Guglielmone, and he was ordained and installed on May 13, 2022, the first Haitian-born bishop to head a diocese in the United States. His episcopate in South Carolina has been comparatively quiet in public terms: he has spoken on racism in the Church, drawing on listening sessions with those hurt by it, and in December 2023 he wrote to his clergy on Fiducia Supplicans, insisting that Church doctrine on marriage had not changed. His motto is drawn from Matthew 25: whatever is done to the least is done to Christ.
- 2021-11-28PREDECESSOR ACT, NOT FABRE-JEUNE'S: Guglielmone's Policy Regarding Celebration of the Mass of 1962 took effect, limiting the old Mass to four named parishes and barring Confirmation and Anointing of the Sick in the traditional form. Recorded here as inherited context only; it does not move Fabre-Jeune's posture. ↗
Bishop Fabre-Jeune inherited a settled, limited provision for the 1962 Missal and has left no governing act of his own on it in the sources consulted. His predecessor, Robert Guglielmone, issued the diocesan Policy Regarding Celebration of the Mass of 1962, effective November 28, 2021, which confined the old Mass to four parishes - Stella Maris on Sullivan's Island, Sacred Heart in Charleston, Prince of Peace in Taylors, and Our Lady of the Lake in Chapin - and barred Confirmation and the Anointing of the Sick in the traditional form. Fabre-Jeune was installed six months later, on May 13, 2022, and no new policy, decree, dispensation request, or public statement on the old Mass by him has been found.
What has been verified is continuation, not action. The Carolina Traditional Liturgy Society's current Mass list, which states that every Mass it lists is offered according to the 1962 books, still carries Prince of Peace (Sunday noon, weekdays at noon, Saturday morning) and Stella Maris (Sunday evening), and a January 2026 bulletin for Our Lady of the Lake, Chapin, still advertises a Sunday 1 p.m. Traditional Latin Mass. Sacred Heart in Charleston, the fourth parish named in the 2021 policy, could not be verified as a current 1962 venue in this pass, so no current site total is asserted. Continuation under an inherited policy is not a governing act: it does not move posture.
The posture is therefore no_record, plainly stated. The restrictions that shape Charleston's old-Mass life - the four-parish limit and the sacramental bar - are Guglielmone's, not Fabre-Jeune's, and the board row's attribution should not be read as his. If a Fabre-Jeune policy, faculty renewal, or appointment sustaining the Mass is later produced, the verdict would need revisiting; on the present record there is nothing of his to weigh.