James T. Ruggieri
James Thomas Ruggieri was born on January 12, 1968, in Providence, Rhode Island, the youngest of four sons of John and Irene Ruggieri, and was educated in the Barrington public schools. He attended the College of the Holy Cross and Providence College, where he took a degree in religious studies in 1990, then earned a Master of Divinity at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore in 1994. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Providence on June 24, 1995, and is fluent in Spanish, a language he learned in order to serve the inner-city parishes that would define his priesthood.
For nearly three decades he pastored in Providence, above all at St. Patrick Parish from 2003 to 2024 and St. Michael the Archangel from 2020 to 2024. He became known across Rhode Island for driving a food truck decorated with images of Mother Teresa and St. John Paul II through the city's poorer neighborhoods, and in 2009 he helped found St. Patrick Academy, a Catholic college-preparatory high school with no set tuition, where families pay what they can afford. Providence College honored him with its 2024 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Vision Award.
On February 13, 2024, Pope Francis named him the thirteenth Bishop of Portland in Maine, and he was ordained and installed on May 7, 2024, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, succeeding Robert Deeley. He took over the only diocese in Maine as an outsider known for plain, hands-on charity. His motto is Auspice Maria, under the protection of Mary.
- 2024-06-07In his first interview as bishop, asked whether he would support continuation of the weekly Latin-language Mass in Portland, answered that he was not opposed to the Latin Mass and thought it served people in varied ways. A statement of disposition, not a governing act; it does not move posture. ↗
- 2025-04-13By letter released to the Traditional Latin Mass community on Palm Sunday 2025, announced the retirement of Fr. Robert Parent as chaplain of the St. Gregory the Great Latin Mass Chaplaincy effective December 31, 2025, tapped Fr. Kyle Doustou to assume the Portland chaplain role as of June 2, 2025, and asked Doustou to plan with the Portland community the transfer of Sunday confessions and Mass from the Cathedral chapel to St. Joseph Oratory, formerly St. Joseph Church, on Stevens Avenue in Portland. A successor for the Lewiston community was undecided at that date. ↗
- 2025-05-11Attended the Traditional Latin Mass Confirmation Mass at the Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul, Lewiston, at which six children of the Traditional Latin Mass community received Confirmation, with a reception afterward. Witness, not a governing act; it does not move posture. ↗
- 2025-06-01Appointed Fr. Kyle Doustou Vicar General of the Diocese of Portland, with oversight of the Latin Mass Chaplaincy among other offices, and named him Rector of St. Joseph Oratory, entrusted with the pastoral care of the faithful attached to the Traditional Latin Mass. ↗
- 2025-07-31By decree, formally established St. Joseph Oratory as a public juridic person of the Diocese of Portland, setting forth its canonical identity, mission, and pastoral purpose for the Latin Mass community of Portland, giving the Portland old-Mass community a dedicated juridic home in place of its former use of the Cathedral chapel. The Oratory's own site dates the erection to July 2025; its September 2026 bulletin gives August 15, 2025; the July 31 date is taken from Una Voce Maine's decree notice and the discrepancy is flagged in the notes. ↗
Bishop Ruggieri inherited the St. Gregory the Great Latin Mass Chaplaincy, a diocesan chaplaincy serving old-Mass communities in Portland, where it met in the Cathedral chapel, and in Lewiston, under Fr. Robert Parent. He began with a word rather than an act: in his first interview in June 2024 he said he was not opposed to the Latin Mass and thought it served people in varied ways. That disposition matters as context, but under the governing rules a statement of openness is witness, not posture, and nothing in this dossier rests on it.
The posture rests on what he did in 2025. By a Palm Sunday letter he moved the Portland chaplaincy's leadership to Fr. Kyle Doustou, effective June 2, and directed the transfer of Sunday confessions and Mass from the Cathedral chapel to St. Joseph Oratory on Stevens Avenue. On June 1 he made Doustou his vicar general with oversight of the Latin Mass Chaplaincy and rector of the Oratory, and by decree dated July 31, 2025, he erected St. Joseph Oratory as a public juridic person of the diocese, with its own canonical identity and mission for the Latin Mass community. A borrowed chapel became a juridic home with a rector: that is an expansion of the old Mass's institutional footing, not a mere continuation.
One loose end tempers the picture without changing the verdict. The Lewiston community's succession after Parent's retirement on December 31, 2025, was still undecided when the Palm Sunday letter was written, and the current Una Voce Maine listing shows no regular Lewiston Sunday Mass, while the statewide count stands at four venues: Portland weekly, Falmouth and Orono on First Saturdays, and Kennebunk on third Sundays from September to April. The Portland expansion is documented; the Lewiston outcome after 2025 is an open debt for the next pass.