John Joseph McDermott
John Joseph McDermott was born on March 19, 1963, in Red Bank, New Jersey, the seventh of ten children of Robert and Jacqueline (Sullivan) McDermott. After a year at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy he turned toward the priesthood, studying at Belmont Abbey College and Mount St. Mary's Seminary, Emmitsburg, and earning a licentiate in canon law from the Catholic University of America (2004). He was ordained a priest of Burlington on June 3, 1989.
Vermont became his home for good. He served parishes across the state and school and university chaplaincies, then from 2004 the chancery itself - chancellor, moderator of the curia and, from 2009, vicar general under both Bps. Matano and Coyne. Twice the diocese turned to him in a vacancy, in 2014 and again in October 2023. Parishioners also knew a runner, an avid golfer and a singer of show tunes; his motto is 'God alone suffices.'
Pope Francis named his own administrator the eleventh Bishop of Burlington on May 6, 2024; McDermott was ordained and installed on July 15, 2024, the first priest of the diocese raised to its see since Robert Joyce in 1954. Ten weeks later he filed the diocese for Chapter 11 reorganization under the weight of clergy-abuse lawsuits, and that case has defined his episcopate so far.
- 2026-07Continuity in fact: the Burlington deanery Mass schedule effective 4 July 2026 still lists St. Anthony, Burlington, with a 9:30 am Sunday 'Extraordinary Form (TLM)', and the chaplaincy's own site, checked in October 2026, publishes the unchanged six-day pattern (Sunday 9:30 am High Mass; Low Mass Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday). No FSSP or ICKSP presence exists in the diocese; the chaplaincy is diocesan. ↗
- 2023-10-14In his column 'Interregnum and diocesan administrator' (The Inland See, 14-20 Oct 2023) McDermott announced his election by the College of Consultors and stated the rule of his government, quoting canon 428: 'When a see is vacant, nothing is to be altered,' adding that as administrator he had to avoid any significant new initiatives. No act of his as administrator touching the old Mass is recorded; the chaplaincy's schedule continued uninterrupted through the vacancy. ↗
McDermott has lived alongside the old Mass for a long time without ever having to rule on it. As chancellor in 2007 he was the diocese's public voice after Summorum Pontificum, urging patience while priests were trained; a decade later he was pastor and administrator of Christ the King-St. Anthony Parish, Burlington, when Bp. Coyne erected the Latin Mass chaplaincy at St. Anthony's in 2017, and the chaplaincy flourished in his parish with a Sunday High Mass and weekday Low Masses six days a week under Fr. Brian O'Donnell.
When Traditionis Custodes came in July 2021, Burlington made no public response that anyone recorded - Catholic News Agency's survey listed the diocese as 'N/A' - and no decree of Coyne's has surfaced since. The chaplaincy simply continued: through the last two years of Coyne, through the vacancy McDermott governed under his own stated rule that 'when a see is vacant, nothing is to be altered,' and through the first two years of his episcopate. The July 2026 deanery schedule still lists the Sunday Traditional Latin Mass at St. Anthony's, on the same pattern as before the motu proprio.
That is preservation in fact, but it is not yet a record of his own. No permission sought, no restriction imposed, no word spoken: on the old Mass, Bishop McDermott's record so far is the record he inherited. A small, single-site community - the only one in Vermont - survives whole under him, and he deserves the credit due to a shepherd who leaves a healthy thing alone. Whether he would defend it if defence were required, nothing in his record yet shows.