Joseph R. Kopacz
Joseph Richard Kopacz was born on September 16, 1950, in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, the second of three children of Stanley and Carmella Kopacz. A son of Pennsylvania's anthracite country, he was formed for the Diocese of Scranton: Dunmore Central Catholic High School, a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Scranton, theology at Christ the King Seminary in Buffalo, and - for a man who never stopped studying - a master's in Latin from Fordham, then a master's in counseling and a doctorate in human development from Marywood University, completed in 2000 while he was already a pastor.
Ordained on May 7, 1977, he spent a decade teaching at St. Pius X Seminary in Dalton and later returned as its director of formation; in between and after came pastorates - three Jessup parishes at once, Nativity of Our Lord in Scranton, Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and finally Most Holy Trinity in Mount Pocono, a parish formed by consolidation on his watch. From 2005 to 2009 he was Scranton's vicar general and vicar for clergy.
On December 12, 2013, Pope Francis sent this Pennsylvania educator-pastor to Mississippi. Kopacz was ordained and installed as the eleventh Bishop of Jackson on February 6, 2014. His diocese is the largest by area east of the Mississippi River and one of the most thinly Catholic in the nation - some 52,000 Catholics among more than two million Mississippians. His motto is Fiat lux.
- 2014-09-05Pre-TC context (not a TC-era act): with Kopacz's permission, Una Voce Mississippi hosted the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius for a Sancta Missa Latin Mass workshop in the diocese, concluding with a Missa Cantata at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle - reported by the diocesan newspaper, Mississippi Catholic. ↗
- 2021-07CNA's survey of diocesan responses to Traditionis Custodes (as of July 30, 2021) listed the Diocese of Jackson as N/A - no public response. ↗
Kopacz's Jackson episcopate began with one of the warmer welcomes any American bishop gave the old Mass in the Summorum Pontificum years: in September 2014, months after his installation, the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius came at Una Voce Mississippi's invitation and with his permission to train his priests in the 1962 Missal, and the workshop closed with a sung Mass in his own cathedral. That is a pre-Traditionis Custodes act, and under the house rule it is context, not posture - but it is real context, and it is his.
Of the TC era itself, nothing of his is on record. CNA's July 2021 survey lists Jackson as N/A; no decree, statement, permission or restriction by Kopacz after July 16, 2021 was found, and no currently scheduled 1962-Missal Mass in the diocese could be verified from the sources consulted. If a small traditional community has simply carried on undisturbed, that continuation is undocumented in anything he has published. His TC-era posture is therefore no_record - with the 2014 welcome standing in the dossier as the measure of the man before the motu proprio changed the question.