John Folda
John Thomas Folda was born on August 8, 1961, in Omaha, Nebraska, to James and Mabel Folda. He began in architecture and electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska, then changed course for the priesthood, studying at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood and earning a licentiate in sacred theology from the Angelicum in Rome. Bishop Glennon Flavin of Lincoln ordained him on May 27, 1989, and the Diocese of Lincoln put his gifts to work in formation: after parish assignments he became spiritual director and then rector of St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Seward, a post he held from 1999 until Pope Francis called him north.
On April 8, 2013, he was named the eighth Bishop of Fargo, and he was ordained and installed at St. Mary's Cathedral on June 19, 2013, succeeding Samuel Aquila. He has now led the eastern North Dakota diocese - some 130 parishes across thirty counties of prairie - for more than thirteen years, the whole span of the Traditionis Custodes era falling inside his tenure. His manner is that of the formation director he was: quiet, doctrinal, more teacher than legislator, and his diocese has largely been governed in that register.
- 2021-07CNA's July 2021 state-by-state survey of diocesan responses to Traditionis Custodes recorded no public response from the Diocese of Fargo (listed N/A); no decree, letter or public statement of his on the old Mass has been found in the sources searched. ↗
- 2025-11St. Mary's Cathedral bulletin carries a standing notice for a Traditional Latin Mass at 12:00 p.m. on Sundays at the Shanley High School chapel, 5600 25th St. S, Fargo; the same notice appears in the cathedral bulletin of April 26, 2026 - the single diocesan site, continuing undisturbed. ↗
Folda's TC era on the old Mass is a study in silence. CNA's July 2021 survey listed Fargo as N/A, and no decree, letter or public statement of his implementing Traditionis Custodes has been found. What exists is continuation: a Traditional Latin Mass at 12:00 p.m. on Sundays, published in St. Mary's Cathedral's own bulletins in November 2025 and April 2026 as offered at the Shanley High School chapel in south Fargo - a single site, running on undisturbed.
Undisturbed continuation without an act of his own is, under this project's settled rule, no_record rather than preserved: preservation must be documented by the man's own dated act, and none has been found. His one tradition-adjacent intervention, the 2020 Communion-on-the-tongue letter, belongs to the Summorum era and to the reformed Mass's discipline as much as to the old, and sits in his controversies as context. On the old Mass, his record so far is the record he inherited.