José Horacio Gómez
José Horacio Gómez was born in 1951 in Monterrey, Mexico, joined Opus Dei as a university student, and was ordained a priest of the prelature in 1978. He served in Texas, became auxiliary bishop of Denver in 2001 and Archbishop of San Antonio in 2004.
Pope Benedict XVI named him coadjutor of Los Angeles in 2010; he succeeded Cardinal Roger Mahony in 2011 as the first Hispanic archbishop of the largest U.S. archdiocese. He served as president of the U.S. bishops' conference from 2019 to 2022.
Archbishop Gómez's record on the old Mass is, on the evidence, neither hostile nor protective — a record of permissive continuation. His instincts before the storm were genuinely friendly: in 2018 he personally dedicated St. Vitus in the San Fernando Valley as a Fraternity of St. Peter parish for the Traditional Latin Mass, and chanted the dedication in Latin himself. As of 2021 the older rite was offered at seven locations across Los Angeles.
When Traditionis Custodes fell, however, the largest archdiocese in the country produced no protective decree and no crackdown — only a brief, bland statement from Gómez in his capacity as conference president, welcoming the pope's 'desire to foster unity.' He let the existing Masses continue; the FSSP parish he had dedicated remained. He neither shielded the old rite with a firm hand nor moved against it.
That is the honest shape of it: a bishop who once acted as a friend, and then, when friendship would have cost something, offered only quiet toleration. The Mass survives in Los Angeles, and for that the faithful may be glad. But a mixed record it is — generosity in the calm, silence in the storm.