James S. Wall
James Sean Wall was born on October 11, 1964, in Ganado, Arizona, in the Navajo Nation, one of six children of James and Joan Wall, converts who had come into the Church through two Franciscan friars. A Chandler High School graduate (1983), he took a history degree at Arizona State University in 1993 and entered St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, earning a Master of Divinity in 1998, with further study at the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Phoenix on June 6, 1998.
He was parochial vicar at St. Theresa in Phoenix and St. Timothy in Mesa, then pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle in Phoenix (2002-2007). He then served as vicar for priests, briefly as administrator of a Scottsdale parish, and as director of the Mount Claret Retreat Center, and sat on the USCCB's National Advisory Council. On February 5, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI named him the fourth Bishop of Gallup; he was consecrated and installed that April at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gallup.
Gallup covers some 55,000 square miles of New Mexico and Arizona and is often called the poorest diocese in the United States; much of it is Native American mission country - Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and Apache. His episcopate has been marked by hard reckoning: in 2013 the diocese entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy to settle clergy-abuse claims, emerging in 2017, and in 2023 he returned St. Michael's Mission to diocesan operation from the Franciscans. His episcopal motto is Estote factores verbi - "Be doers of the word."
- 2019-06-20Directed that the 11:00 a.m. Sunday Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral be celebrated ad orientem from Corpus Christi 2019 and encouraged the practice diocese-wide. The act concerned the reformed Missal, not the 1962 Missal, and predates Traditionis custodes; it is context, not a posture act. (Cited to the Wayback capture: the original CNA URL was retired when CNA moved to EWTN News and now redirects to a home page.) ↗
No Traditional Latin Mass offered under diocesan authority, and no decree or statement by Bishop Wall on the old Mass, has been found in the sources consulted, before or after Traditionis custodes. The CNA survey of diocesan responses in July 2021 lists Gallup as N/A, and no FSSP, ICKSP, or other society apostolate is present in the diocese.
His one documented traditional-adjacent act predates the motu proprio and did not concern the 1962 Missal: in 2019 he directed that the 11:00 a.m. Sunday Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral be celebrated ad orientem - the reformed Mass facing the altar - and encouraged the practice across the diocese. On the old Mass itself, nothing happened: no act of permission, restriction, or suppression is documented, and his posture is recorded as no_record, plainly.