José Maria Garcia Maldonado
José María García-Maldonado was born on March 24, 1979, in San Julián, Jalisco, Mexico, the fifth of nine children. After local public schools and the minor seminary of the Diocese of San Juan de los Lagos, where he completed his philosophy requirements, he joined his family in the United States in August 2001. In 2002 he entered Casa Jesus, the Archdiocese of Chicago's program for Spanish-speaking men discerning the priesthood, and in 2003 he entered Mundelein Seminary, completing a master of divinity in 2007.
He was ordained a priest for Chicago on May 17, 2008, by Cardinal Francis George, and his ministry has been rooted in Hispanic parishes. He served as associate pastor of St. Sylvester Parish and of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Des Plaines, then as administrator and pastor of Good Shepherd Parish from 2012 to 2021 and administrator of Our Lady of Tepeyac. In 2021 he became pastor of San Jose Luis Sanchez del Rio Parish in Humboldt Park, also serving in vocations work, as a dean, and on the presbyteral council and college of consultors.
Pope Francis appointed him auxiliary bishop of Chicago and titular bishop of Fallaba on December 20, 2024, and he was ordained a bishop at Holy Name Cathedral on February 26, 2025. At that ordination he was assigned as episcopal vicar of Vicariate IV. In November 2025 he led an outdoor All Saints Mass beside the Broadview immigration processing center, after clergy were twice barred from bringing the Eucharist to detainees inside. His motto is Jesu Cristo mi defensa y remedio, Jesus Christ my defense and remedy.
Garcia-Maldonado entered the episcopate three years after Chicago's Traditionis custodes settlement, and he inherited it whole. Cardinal Cupich's policy of December 27, 2021, effective January 25, 2022, requires the archbishop's written permission for any celebration of the old rite, bars the 1962 Mass from parish churches without his and the Vatican's agreement, and bans it on first Sundays, Christmas, the Triduum, Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday. Within that framework St. John Cantius, served by the Canons Regular, kept its Sunday 1962 Missal Masses except on first Sundays, while the Institute of Christ the King suspended public Masses at its Chicago shrine on August 1, 2022. All of this predates Garcia-Maldonado's appointment and is Cupich's, not his.
A search for any act of Garcia-Maldonado's own on the old Mass - a statement, decree, permission, appointment sustaining a 1962 community, or public letter since his December 2024 appointment - found nothing. His public episcopal profile since ordination has been migration ministry, above all the November 2025 Broadview Mass, which concerned the reformed rite and access to detainees, not the 1962 Missal, and it moves nothing here. Since February 2025 he has been episcopal vicar of Vicariate IV, but the policy reserves old-rite permission to the archbishop himself, so vicariate office cannot move posture.
The verdict is therefore no_record at medium confidence: absence searched for, not assumed, and bounded by what is public. No archdiocese-wide count of 1962 venues is asserted, because no source fetched enumerates one; sites_before and sites_now are null rather than guessed from a blog's list. The board row for Chicago describes Cupich's suppressed policy, not Garcia-Maldonado, so there is no contradiction to resolve - only the standing question for a later pass, whether any internal archdiocesan permission bearing his name exists outside the public record.