Jeffrey S. Grob
Jeffrey Scott Grob was born March 19, 1961, in Cross Plains, Wisconsin, the only child of dairy farmers. Raised on the family farm in the Diocese of Madison, he attended St. Meinrad Seminary and the Pontifical College Josephinum (BA, 1988), then completed priestly formation at Mundelein Seminary. He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin on May 23, 1992.
Grob is a canon lawyer and academic. He earned a licentiate (2000) and doctorate (2007) in canon law from Saint Paul University in Ottawa and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Ottawa (2007); his doctoral dissertation was a comparative study of the 1614 and 1998 versions of the Rite of Exorcism. In Chicago he served as Judicial Vicar of the archdiocese and, on the strength of his exorcism scholarship, served roughly two decades as the archdiocese's chief exorcist.
Pope Francis named Grob an auxiliary bishop of Chicago in September 2020; he was consecrated at Holy Name Cathedral on November 13, 2020, by Cardinal Blase Cupich. On November 4, 2024, Pope Francis named him the 12th Archbishop of Milwaukee, succeeding Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki. Grob was installed at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist on January 14, 2025. He is known as an extroverted, pastorally-focused 'farm boy' shepherd and remains one of the U.S. hierarchy's most credentialed authorities on exorcism and canon law.
The record to date is favorable but young. Grob inherited an unusually generous Traditional Latin Mass arrangement in Milwaukee and has left it intact. His predecessor, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, set the tone in July 2021 by declaring that Traditionis Custodes 'will not create much change,' keeping the 1962 Missal at St. Stanislaus with no day restrictions and explicitly rejecting the premise that local TLM-goers denied Vatican II. Grob has neither reversed nor narrowed any of this -- a meaningful contrast with bishops who used Traditionis Custodes to suppress the old rite.
Grob's own signal came in his July 9, 2026 letter on the SSPX excommunications. Rather than lumping all traditionalists together, he distinguished the canonically irregular SSPX from the licit, in-communion TLM -- affirming that the 1962-Missal Mass 'is offered in full communion with the Church here throughout this Archdiocese at multiple locations,' and singling out for praise 'the reverent sacramental care provided at St. Stanislaus Oratory' where the Institute of Christ the King offers the traditional Mass and sacraments daily. He reassured the faithful that those who attended SSPX Masses 'simply out of love for the sacred liturgy' are not excommunicated. This is the posture of a canonist who values regularity, not a liturgical hardliner hostile to the old rite.
Caveats keep this short of a settled verdict. Grob's warmest words for the TLM appear inside a document whose main purpose was to warn against the SSPX, so his enthusiasm is partly a function of contrasting the licit with the illicit. He has issued no proactive TLM expansion, no dedicated statement on ad orientem, altar rails, or sacramental permissions, and his public priorities (evangelization, safeguarding, exorcism) are not liturgy-centric. Nothing suggests hostility -- the trajectory is positive -- but a full verdict should wait for how he handles the next TLM permission request or any future tightening from Rome.