José Horacio Gómez
Jose Horacio Gomez Velasco was born on December 26, 1951, in Monterrey, Mexico. As a university student he joined Opus Dei, and he was ordained a priest of the prelature on August 15, 1978, at the shrine of Torreciudad in Spain. His early ministry was spent in Texas, working with the Hispanic faithful who would remain the center of his priesthood, before Pope John Paul II named him an auxiliary bishop of Denver on January 23, 2001; he was ordained a bishop that March by Archbishop Charles Chaput.
He became Archbishop of San Antonio at the end of 2004 and was installed the following February, leading the Texas archdiocese for five years. In April 2010 Benedict XVI named him coadjutor of Los Angeles, and on March 1, 2011 he succeeded Cardinal Roger Mahony - the first Hispanic archbishop of the largest archdiocese in the United States, a church of several million Catholics, most of them immigrants or their children.
From 2019 to 2022 he served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, leading the conference through the pandemic, the debate over Communion for pro-abortion politicians, and the launch of the National Eucharistic Revival; his January 2021 statement on the Biden inauguration drew a Vatican rebuke and public dissent from brother bishops. On the old Mass his record is one of permissive continuation: in 2018 he had personally dedicated St. Vitus as a Fraternity of St. Peter parish, chanting the dedication in Latin himself.
- 2021-07Statement on Traditionis Custodes: he welcomed the motu proprio's desire 'to foster unity among Catholics who celebrate the Roman Rite' and, as USCCB president, urged his brother bishops to implement it 'with care, patience, justice, and charity'. No detailed public decree followed. The archdiocese's older-rite locations were consolidated over the years that followed, but the public record does not date that consolidation or tie it to any act of his, and no posture is recorded for this tenure. ↗
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.