Joseph William Tobin
Joseph William Tobin was born May 3, 1952, in Detroit, Michigan, the eldest of 13 children of an Irish-descended family. He was baptized at the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, a Redemptorist parish, and educated at Holy Redeemer College, Waterford, Wisconsin (B.A. Philosophy, 1975), and Mount Saint Alphonsus Seminary, Esopus, New York. He professed vows in the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists, C.Ss.R.) in 1973, made perpetual vows in 1976, and was ordained a priest in 1978. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese.
After parish work in Detroit and Chicago, Tobin served as General Consultor in Rome (1991-1997) and then as Superior General of the Redemptorists worldwide from 1997 to 2009. In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI called him to the Roman Curia as Secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, ordaining him titular Archbishop of Obba. He served as Archbishop of Indianapolis from 2012 to 2016.
Pope Francis created Tobin a cardinal at the consistory of November 19, 2016; days earlier (November 7, 2016) Francis had named him Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, where he was installed January 6, 2017 as New Jersey's first resident cardinal. He remains Archbishop of Newark as of mid-2026. A prominent Francis ally, he participated in the 2025 conclave and was reported papabile before the election of Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XIV. He is widely identified as a leading progressive voice in the U.S. hierarchy, especially on migration and outreach to LGBT Catholics.
On the specific question of the Traditional Latin Mass in Newark, Tobin's record is notably restrained for a Francis-aligned progressive. No public restrictive diocesan decree implementing Traditionis Custodes has been found for the Archdiocese of Newark. The archdiocese posted the Vatican's own texts on its website, but there is no evidence Tobin suppressed existing TLM sites, closed personal parishes, or barred the older sacraments as some U.S. bishops did.
Existing traditional communities appear to have continued. The Latin Mass Community of Jersey City, active since 1995, has continued to offer a Sunday Traditional Latin Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, celebrated by a diocesan priest. The Society of St. Pius X operates a chapel in North Caldwell, but that is outside the archbishop's jurisdiction and not affected by Traditionis Custodes. No FSSP or ICKSP apostolate was found in the Archdiocese of Newark, and no diocesan-wide ad orientem, altar-rail, or restrictive sacrament rules attributable to Tobin were found.
Tobin's own public posture, expressed at the October 2023 Synod briefing in Rome, was one of measured sympathy: he acknowledged the 'grief' of TLM-attached Catholics and said their sense of feeling 'banished' is real, while defending the legitimacy of the restrictions and insisting they had not actually been expelled from the Church. This is the crux: he endorses the Francis restrictions in principle but distanced himself from a punitive tone and did not translate them into local suppression. The verdict is therefore mixed -- not an active persecutor of the traditional movement in his own archdiocese, but a doctrinally progressive prelate who supports the framework of Traditionis Custodes and cannot be counted a friend of the traditional cause.