Joseph Bambera
Joseph Charles Bambera was born March 21, 1956, in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, a coal-country town in the Diocese of Scranton, to Joseph and Irene (Kucharski) Bambera. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in art history from the University of Pittsburgh (1978), studied at St. Pius X Seminary in Dalton and at Mary Immaculate Seminary in Northampton, and was ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Scranton on November 5, 1983, at St. Peter's Cathedral. He later earned a Licentiate in Canon Law from Saint Paul University in Ottawa (1991).
As a priest of Scranton, Bambera served as assistant pastor at St. Mary of the Assumption, in a series of roles at the cathedral parish, and as pastor of Holy Name of Jesus (Scranton), St. John Bosco (Conyngham), and Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Dickson City), among others. He was named a Prelate of Honor by Pope John Paul II in 1997, chaired the diocesan presbyteral council, and served as episcopal vicar and vicar for priests. From early in his career he specialized in ecumenism, becoming diocesan director of ecumenism and interfaith affairs in 1993 — the thread that would define his national profile.
On February 23, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Bambera the tenth Bishop of Scranton; he was consecrated and installed at St. Peter's Cathedral on April 26, 2010. He succeeded Bishop Joseph Martino, whose short, combative tenure (2003–2009) had featured sweeping parish and school consolidations and public clashes over political and cultural issues before Martino resigned in August 2009. Bambera, a canon lawyer and consensus-builder, was widely received as a deliberate contrast: pastoral, conciliatory, administratively steady, and generally aligned with the moderate, Francis-era mainstream of the U.S. episcopate.
Nationally, Bambera's reputation is built on interreligious and ecumenical work rather than liturgical politics. He serves as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, as Catholic co-chair of the international Catholic/Pentecostal dialogue, and has taken part in the Roman Catholic/Polish National Catholic dialogue. He holds honorary doctorates from King's College, Misericordia University, and the University of Scranton. It is against this establishment backdrop that his notably steady treatment of the local traditional community stands out.
On paper Bishop Bambera fits the Francis-era, ecumenically-minded, moderate mold that traditional Catholics have learned to hold at arm's length, and his handling of Traditionis Custodes was, formally, compliance: he preserved the FSSP Mass only 'until further study and guidance' and required diocesan priests to seek explicit permission for the 1962 Missal. His public vocabulary echoes the motu proprio's 'unity' framing. On those grounds alone he reads as an establishment bishop, not a partisan of the old rite.
But the deeds tell a warmer story than the boilerplate. Through the entire post-2021 crackdown — when many American bishops evicted Latin Masses from parish churches or quietly starved them — Bambera did the opposite. He kept the FSSP's St. Michael the Archangel operating as a stable personal parish, visited it, attended the 1962-rite Mass himself, and commended the community. Most tellingly, in September 2025 he moved the apostolate not out of a church but into a bigger and more historic one, St. Lucy's, expanding it. There is no evidence of a harder later decree, a frequency cap, or an eviction following the 2021 Responsa or the 2023 rescript, and when the SSPX crisis broke in 2026 he pointed the traditionally-minded toward the FSSP in communion rather than away.
The honest verdict is mixed — and mixed on the good side of the ledger. Bambera is no ideological ally of the traditional movement, and diocesan priests wanting the old Mass still face the standard permission regime. Yet toward the actual flesh-and-blood traditional community in his care he has been steady, respectful, even expansive, treating the FSSP parish as a permanent, protected fixture rather than a problem to be managed away. Judged by what he has done rather than the camp he belongs to, traditional Catholics in Scranton have fared far better than most.