John Iffert
John Curtis Iffert was born on November 23, 1967, in Du Quoin, Illinois, the youngest of three children, and grew up on the family farm outside the town. He attended Sacred Heart School and Du Quoin High School, then earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Illinois State University in 1988. He entered Mundelein Seminary in 1992, earning a Bachelor of Sacred Theology in 1996 and a Master of Divinity in 1997, and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Belleville on June 7, 1997, by Bishop Wilton Gregory.
In Belleville he served as pastor of Immaculate Conception in Columbia, St. Mary in Mount Vernon, and St. Barbara in Scheller, and later of St. Stephen in Caseyville, alongside diocesan posts on the College of Consultors, the Priest Personnel Board, and the Diocesan Finance Council, as vicar forane and co-vicar for priests. In October 2020 he became vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Diocese of Belleville, the post he held when he was named a bishop.
Pope Francis appointed him the eleventh Bishop of Covington on July 13, 2021, accepting the resignation of Bishop Roger Foys, and he was ordained and installed at St. Mary's Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington on September 30, 2021. His episcopal motto is 'In all things give thanks.' He leads a compact northern Kentucky diocese, and his tenure has been defined in the traditional-liturgy record by his January 2024 removal of the two priests of the diocese's Latin Mass parish and his provision of replacement celebrations for its community.
- 2024-01-17In a letter to Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, Park Hills, requested the resignation of pastor Fr. Shannon Collins, MSJB, and removed parochial vicar Fr. Sean Kopczynski, MSJB, and removed both priests' faculties to teach, preach, or celebrate the sacraments publicly, after Collins preached that the Mass as celebrated in the current Roman liturgy is 'irrelevant' and preserves 'literally nothing of the old.' Iffert wrote that both men maintained these errors and refused to renounce them, disqualifying them from permission to celebrate publicly with the 1962 Missal and from leading a personal parish. ↗
- 2024-01-28Provided replacement Masses in the older rite after withdrawing the faculties: by his second letter, two Latin-liturgy Masses at St Ann Mission, West Covington, on Sunday January 28, 2024 at 7 and 9 a.m., celebrated by Fr Matthew Cushing of All Saints, Walton. He said he would attend to join the parishioners for dialogue about the future of the parish. WHY the parish church was unavailable is DISPUTED: Iffert's first letter says the board of the Missionaries of St John the Baptist owns the building and refused its use to the diocese and the parish; the two priests' own statement says they offered the church to him several times. Neither account is adopted here. ↗
- 2025-03-02Parish bulletins evidence the Latin Mass parish operating again at its Park Hills home under a diocesan priest: the March 2, 2025 bulletin names Fr. Matthew Cushing as pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes, 1101 Amsterdam Road, Park Hills, with Holy Family Oratory, Union. No diocesan decree restoring the parish to the building was found; the bulletin is the evidence. ↗
Bishop Iffert inherited a single, settled old-Mass provision: Our Lady of Lourdes in Park Hills, erected by his predecessor Bishop Foys as a quasi-parish for the exclusive celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass in 2016 and elevated to a personal parish in 2018, staffed by the Missionaries of St. John the Baptist. Crux reported in January 2024 that it was the only parish in the diocese offering the Traditional Latin Mass. Iffert himself was installed on September 30, 2021, after Traditionis custodes was issued, and no implementation document of his from 2021-2022 was found.
His governing act came in January 2024, and it was aimed at priests, not at the form: he requested the resignation of pastor Fr. Shannon Collins and removed Fr. Sean Kopczynski, withdrawing both men's faculties for public ministry, on the stated ground that Collins had preached that the current Roman liturgy is 'irrelevant' and that both men maintained and refused to renounce those errors. In the same days he kept the Mass itself going, arranging two Sunday Traditional Latin Masses for the parish community at St. Ann Mission in Covington under Fr. Matthew Cushing.
By March 2025 the parish bulletins show the community back at its Park Hills home under Cushing as pastor, with Holy Family Oratory in Union also listed, and April 2026 bulletins show the same arrangement continuing. The Mass therefore survives under diocesan priests after the removal of its founding priests and a temporary loss of its building. That is restricted, not preserved and not suppressed: the form was never ended, but the community's provision was placed under tighter episcopal control and its original celebrants were removed.