Joseph J. Tyson
Joseph Jude Tyson was born on October 16, 1957, in Moses Lake, Washington, was baptized at St. Paul Cathedral in Yakima, and grew up in Seattle, a graduate of Bishop Blanchet High School (1975). At the University of Washington he took degrees in Russian and East European studies and editorial journalism (1980) and a master's in international relations (1984), working in campus ministry and refugee services before entering Theological College at the Catholic University of America, where he earned a Master of Divinity in 1989. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Seattle on June 10, 1989.
He served as parochial vicar at St. Louise Parish in Bellevue and at St. James Cathedral, then as pastor of St. Mary of the Valley in Monroe and of three south Seattle parishes. Consecrated an auxiliary bishop of Seattle on June 6, 2005, he also served as vicar general and as superintendent of Catholic schools. On April 12, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI named him the seventh Bishop of Yakima; he was installed on May 31, 2011, at Holy Family Parish in Yakima.
Yakima is a majority-Hispanic agricultural diocese, and Tyson, who speaks Spanish, German, Vietnamese and Serbo-Croatian, has made migrant ministry its signature: every Yakima seminarian works in the fields alongside migrant farmworkers, diocesan priests are expected to minister bilingually, and he has defended detained migrants publicly, including a September 2025 call for the release of a Yakima man held by immigration authorities. His episcopal motto is Christo lumen ad gentes - "Christ, light to the nations."
- 2020-01-19A Traditional Latin Mass was offered at Holy Apostles Church, East Wenatchee, by Fr. Seamus Kerr, announced in the bulletin of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish for January 19, 2020. Pre-TC provision in the diocese; context only. ↗
- 2021-11-21The bulletin of Holy Family Parish, Yakima, for November 21, 2021 lists in its Mass schedule a 'Latin Mass 12:30 PM (2nd Sunday of the Month)' and announces 'LATIN MASS - SUNDAY, DECEMBER 12 AT 12:30 P.M.' The bulletin nowhere states whether the 1962 Missal or the reformed Mass in Latin was used; under the project's rule the listing is not counted as a 1962 site. ↗
Yakima had real, if modest, provision before Traditionis custodes: in January 2020 a Traditional Latin Mass was announced at Holy Apostles Church in East Wenatchee, offered by Fr. Seamus Kerr. After the motu proprio, Holy Family Parish in Yakima was still listing a monthly 'Latin Mass' - second Sunday, 12:30 p.m. - in its November 21, 2021 bulletin, including for December 12, 2021; but the bulletin does not say whether it used the 1962 Missal or the reformed Mass in Latin, so it cannot be counted as a 1962 site, and the counts here are left null with this accounting in prose.
No decree, statement, permission, or restriction by Bishop Tyson has been found, and by 2026 the Holy Family listing had disappeared from the parish schedule; when it ended, and by whose act, no source consulted establishes. With no dated TC-era act of his own documented, his posture is no_record - stated plainly, and argued openly in the tenure note rather than smoothed over.