Jeffrey M. Fleming
Jeffrey Michael Fleming was born on February 10, 1966, in Billings, Montana, to Mike and Glenda Fleming, and was raised in Belt. He graduated from Carroll College in Helena with degrees in theology and religious education, then studied at Mount Angel Seminary in Oregon, earning a master's degree in theology, and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Helena on May 19, 1992, by Bishop Elden Francis Curtiss. He later earned a licentiate in canon law from the Catholic University of America in 1998.
His Helena ministry mixed parishes and the chancery. Early assignments took him to the Anaconda Catholic Community and the Cathedral of Saint Helena, then to chaplaincy at Carroll College and the directorship of Legendary Lodge, the diocesan youth camp. He was pastor of Saint Rose of Lima in Dillon from 2003 and of Christ the King in Missoula from 2006, with Saint John the Baptist in Frenchtown added in 2013, while serving as director of the chancery, vice chancellor and adjutant judicial vicar. In 2020 he became moderator of the curia and chancellor, adding Saint Mary Parish in Helena in 2022.
Pope Francis appointed him coadjutor bishop of Great Falls-Billings on April 19, 2022, with the right of succession, and he was ordained a bishop on June 22, 2022, in Great Falls. He served alongside Bishop Michael Warfel, with Catholic schools as his charge, until Warfel's resignation was accepted on August 22, 2023, when Fleming succeeded him as the eighth Bishop of Great Falls-Billings. His motto, from the Great Commission, is "Go Make Disciples," and he leads a diocese of some thirty thousand Catholics scattered across more than ninety thousand square miles of eastern Montana.
- 2023-08-22Pope Francis accepted Warfel's resignation and Fleming, until then coadjutor, immediately succeeded him as Bishop of Great Falls-Billings, the eighth ordinary of the see. No statement by Fleming on the Traditional Latin Mass accompanied the succession in any source consulted. ↗
- 2021-09-10CONTEXT, Warfel's act, predating Fleming's ordinary tenure: the tracker records a Warfel promulgation restricting celebration with the 1962 Missal to weekday Masses (including Saturdays), not to be used for Sundays, solemnities or holy days. This is not Fleming's act and does not move his posture; it is the background against which his silence falls. ↗
- 2022-04-19Pope Francis appointed Fleming coadjutor bishop of Great Falls-Billings, with the right of succession. He was ordained a bishop on June 22, 2022, in Great Falls. A coadjutor does not occupy the see, and no act of governance on the old Mass is attributable to him in this period. ↗
- 2023-04CONTEXT, co-signed but not governed by Fleming: the joint pastoral letter on the liturgy, signed by Warfel and Fleming, states that four priests and four parishes (not including the Transalpine Redemptorists, who have separate permission from the Holy See) have temporary permission, with restrictions, to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, and that diocesan policy regarding the Mass is to be followed strictly. Month precision only; the letter is dated April 2023 and was posted by the diocese in May 2023. ↗
Jeffrey Fleming's record on the old Mass is, on the evidence available, a record of absence rather than of action, and this dossier says so plainly. He arrived in Great Falls-Billings as coadjutor in 2022, when the diocese's Traditional Latin Mass policy was already set by his predecessor, Bishop Michael Warfel, whose September 2021 directive, as summarised in the tracker, restricted celebration with the 1962 Missal to weekday Masses, excluding Sundays, solemnities and holy days. A coadjutor does not make liturgical law for a see he does not yet govern, and no act of Fleming's in that capacity, on the old Mass or anything else, has been found.
The one document that bears his name is the joint pastoral letter on the liturgy of April 2023, signed by both Warfel and Fleming while Fleming was still coadjutor. Its section on the Traditional Latin Mass states that four priests and four parishes, not counting the Transalpine Redemptorists, who hold separate permission from the Holy See, have temporary permission, with restrictions, to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, and that diocesan policy on the Mass is to be followed strictly. That is a statement of the inherited position, co-signed by the bishop-in-waiting, not a new grant, renewal or restriction by Fleming himself, and it is filed here as context, not as a posture-moving act.
Since succeeding Warfel on August 22, 2023, Fleming has issued no decree, determination, renewal or revocation on the Traditional Latin Mass that any source consulted for this draft has found, and the four parishes named in the April 2023 letter are not named in it, so their current standing cannot be verified from it. The parishes may well still celebrate under the temporary permission, and the reformed-Latin Masses at Corpus Christi in Great Falls are a different matter, the current Missal in Latin, not the 1962 Missal. Under the governing rule, continuation without a governing act of his own is no_record, and that is the verdict for both of his tenures, stated rather than softened.