Lawrence J. Sullivan
Lawrence John Sullivan was born on January 22, 1966, in Chicago, Illinois, and formed for the priesthood in his home archdiocese. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Niles College Seminary of Loyola University Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity from Mundelein Seminary, later adding a master of science in ecclesial management from The Catholic University of America in 2019. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin ordained him a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago at Holy Name Cathedral on May 23, 1992.
His priesthood joined parish pastoring with the archdiocese's ministry to the bereaved. He served as associate pastor and then pastor of St. Celestine in Elmwood Park, pastor of St. Christina in Chicago from 2008, and pastor of Christ the King in the Beverly neighborhood from 2014, while working in bereavement ministry from 2013 as associate priest director and interim priest director of Catholic Cemeteries. He also served as interim vicar of Vicariate VI from 2023, sat on the Archdiocesan School Board and the College of Consultors, and was vice-chair of the Presbyteral Council.
In April 2021 he stepped aside from Christ the King after an allegation, made in a social-media video, of a sexual assault in 1984 when he was eighteen and not yet a seminarian; he admitted unwelcome verbal comments and denied any physical assault. Cardinal Cupich reinstated him on May 14, 2021, after an archdiocesan and outside investigation concluded the allegation could not be substantiated. Pope Francis appointed him an auxiliary bishop of Chicago on December 20, 2024, with the titular see of Lamfua; he was consecrated on February 26, 2025, and serves as vicar general, with the motto Walk humbly with God.
On the 1962 Missal, Bishop Sullivan has no governing act of his own on record. He was a parish priest and cemetery director when Traditionis custodes was issued in July 2021 and when Cardinal Cupich promulgated Chicago's implementing policy in December 2021, and he did not become a bishop until February 2025. No decree, permission, appointment, or public letter of his on the old Mass was found in diocesan releases, the archdiocesan newspaper, or targeted web searching.
What governs Chicago is therefore inherited, not his. Cupich's policy, effective January 25, 2022, removed the 1962 Missal from parish churches to designated locations, barred it on first Sundays and the great feasts, and required written permission from the archbishop for its use. Sullivan now serves inside that regime as vicar general, the archbishop's chief deputy, but administering a predecessor's policy is not the same as authoring one, and this dossier does not credit him with Cupich's acts.
That distinction is the whole verdict. A search that found nothing is not the same as a record of opposition or of support, and neither may be invented to fill the gap. Until Sullivan himself authorizes, restricts, or sustains a celebration of the old rite by a governing act, his posture is honestly no_record, at high confidence precisely because the window in which he could have acted as a bishop is so short and so thoroughly documented.