John Stowe
John Eric Stowe was born on April 15, 1966, in Amherst, Ohio, and grew up in Lorain, Ohio, where he attended St. Anthony of Padua grade school and Lorain Catholic High School, graduating in 1984. After a year of community college he entered formation with the Order of Friars Minor Conventual, Province of Our Lady of Consolation, studying history and philosophy at Saint Louis University and earning bachelor's degrees in both in 1990. He professed solemn vows on August 1, 1992, studied at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, earning a Master of Divinity and a Licentiate of Sacred Theology in church history, and was ordained a priest on September 16, 1995.
He served in parishes in El Paso, Texas, as associate pastor, administrator, and pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and from 2003 to 2010 served the Diocese of El Paso as vicar general and chancellor, also administering Our Lady of the Valley parish. In 2010 he was elected vicar provincial of his Franciscan province and became rector of the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio, the post he held when named a bishop. He speaks Spanish as well as English.
Pope Francis appointed him the third Bishop of Lexington on March 12, 2015, and he was consecrated and installed at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Lexington on May 5, 2015, succeeding Bishop Ronald Gainer. His diocese covers eastern Kentucky, where Catholics are about three percent of the population and Appalachian poverty is widespread. His episcopal motto is Annuntiamus verbum vitae, 'We announce the word of life.'
- 2022-02-02Issued 'Guardians of the Tradition: Traditionis Custodes and the Celebration of the Liturgy in the Diocese of Lexington,' given February 2, 2022 and effective Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022. After meeting Fr. Mark Fischer, FSSP, chaplain of the Regina Pacis community, Stowe recorded that Fischer agreed to discontinue celebration of the pre-conciliar Mass at St. Peter's downtown, and authorized continuation of celebration according to the 1962 Missal at St. Francis de Sales Church in White Sulphur. The directive states that as of the issuance of Traditionis custodes, Fischer was the only priest in the diocese authorized to celebrate according to the 1962 Missal, and that no other priest had requested authorization. ↗
Bishop Stowe's governing document on the older Missal is his own directive, 'Guardians of the Tradition,' given on February 2, 2022 and effective on Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022. In it he recorded that Fr. Mark Fischer, FSSP, chaplain of the Regina Pacis community, had agreed to discontinue the pre-conciliar Mass at St. Peter's downtown, and he authorized continuation of the 1962 Missal at St. Francis de Sales Church in White Sulphur. The directive also states that Fischer was the only priest in the diocese authorized for the 1962 Missal and that no other priest had requested authorization.
That is a consolidation, not a suppression: the community kept a 1962 celebration under the Fraternity, but it lost its Lexington city Sunday Mass and was confined to a single site with a single authorized celebrant, under the directive's condition that readings be proclaimed in the vernacular. The same directive separately banned ad orientem celebration with a congregation, birettas, and maniples in the reformed rite, which shows the breadth of Stowe's liturgical regulation but is not itself an old-Mass act.
No act by Stowe ending the White Sulphur celebration was found, and no evidence was found for the board row's further claim that in 2024-2025 he ordered a priest to cease the Traditional Latin Mass entirely; that claim is not adopted here. On the documented acts the posture is reduced: two sites became one by his own directive, and the surviving provision continues.