Lawrence T. Persico
Lawrence Thomas Persico was born on November 21, 1950, in Monessen, Pennsylvania, the son of John B. and Helen Gush Persico, and taught by sisters at St. Cajetan School. An eighth-grade vocations program fixed his course: he entered St. Joseph Hall, Greensburg's high-school seminary, in a class of 42 of whom, as he tells it, only one remained by ordination. Erlanger and Latrobe seminaries followed; Bishop William Connare ordained him a priest of Greensburg on April 30, 1977.
Irwin parish work gave way to canon law at the Catholic University of America (licentiate, 1982) and a curial apprenticeship under three Greensburg bishops: assistant chancellor, vice-chancellor, chancellor from 1989, pastor of St. James in New Alexandria from 1998, and from 2005 vicar general and his bishop's delegate for clergy sexual abuse. Named a Prelate of Honor in 2005, he served two terms as vice president of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference - a canon lawyer formed in chanceries and in the abuse files.
The call came on a phone he answered himself at St. James, the secretary being out: the papal nuncio. Benedict XVI appointed him on July 31, 2012, and he was ordained and installed as the diocese's tenth bishop on October 1, 2012, taking the motto Veritas in caritate, truth in charity. At 75, in November 2025, he submitted his resignation as canon law requires and, as of October 2026, still governs his thirteen counties while Pope Leo XIV discerns a successor.
- 2021-07-16Traditionis Custodes issued. The Catholic News Agency / National Catholic Register tracker of episcopal responses, as of July 23, 2021, recorded the Diocese of Erie as N/A, and no public statement, decree or norms by Bishop Persico on the motu proprio has been found in any source consulted for this draft, diocesan or otherwise. His implementation, when it came, was an arrangement, not a document. ↗
- 2021-12-02Letter of Fr. Jason A. Glover, pastor of St. Stanislaus Parish, Erie, to his parishioners, quoted at length in the parish history of St. Hedwig Church. It records that in summer 2021 the pastoral and finance councils had voted to dismantle, dispossess and sell St. Hedwig Church (a secondary church of St. Stanislaus since February 13, 2017, in which Sunday Masses had been forbidden by the 2017 decree); that at an August 2021 gathering of priests Bishop Persico asked about the building's condition and then visited it, St. Hedwig being one of the only churches in the diocese he had yet to visit; and that after the visit he asked whether St. Stanislaus would host the traditional Latin Mass community at St. Hedwig, because the community then celebrated at St. Casimir Church - since February 13, 2017 the lawfully designated parish church of Our Mother of Sorrows Parish - and could not continue there under the Pope's decree, while St. Hedwig, no longer a parish church since its 2017 closure, could receive it in conformity with the Pope's desires. The pastor agreed; St. Hedwig would not be sold or dismantled, and the Latin Mass community would assume the building's maintenance, utilities and taxes. ↗
- 2022-01-01Effective January 2022 (the sources give the month, not the day), St. Hedwig Church reopened as 'The Traditional Latin Apostolate of Saint Stanislaus at St. Hedwig's' and the diocese's Latin Mass community moved there from St. Casimir Church. One site before, one site after; nothing was suppressed, and a church under sentence of sale was returned to weekly worship, with a Sunday Mass the 2017 decree had forbidden there. ↗
- 2023-09-12The diocese's updated preliminary pastoral plan for Erie County states that 'St. Hedwig Church remains a secondary church of St. Stanislaus Parish, as well as home to the Latin Mass Apostolate' - a diocesan reaffirmation of the 2022 arrangement in the later TC era, in the same plan that proposed merging Our Mother of Sorrows Parish (including St. Casimir) into St. Stanislaus. The plan is expressly preliminary; the apostolate's continuation at St. Hedwig is separately attested in 2026 (next action). ↗
- 2026-10-23The Diocese of Erie Latin Mass Community website, fetched on the as-of date, still lists St. Hedwig Church, 521 E. 3rd St., Erie, with a High Mass every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and a Low Mass every Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., confessions 30 minutes before Mass; its FAQ states the Latin Mass is offered at one church in the Diocese of Erie, St. Hedwig. The community's own site defines its Mass as the Traditional Latin Mass in the Extraordinary Form, so the form of the surviving site is established. ↗
Erie entered the Traditionis Custodes era with exactly one traditional Latin Mass community, worshipping at St. Casimir Church - and St. Casimir's was, since February 13, 2017, the lawfully designated parish church of Our Mother of Sorrows Parish, precisely the kind of church article 3 of the motu proprio closed to the 1962 Missal. The Catholic News Agency / National Catholic Register tracker recorded Erie as N/A in July 2021: Bishop Persico issued no public statement, no decree and no norms that any source consulted has preserved. What he did was done in person and in the summer: at an August gathering of priests he asked after the physical condition of St. Hedwig Church - a Polish church closed as a parish church in 2017, whose pastoral and finance councils had just voted to dismantle and sell it - and then went to see it himself.
The fruit of that visit, announced in the pastor's letter of December 2, 2021, was a relocation that saved two things at once. Persico asked whether St. Stanislaus Parish would host the Latin Mass community at St. Hedwig's, which, no longer being a parish church, satisfied the new law; the pastor agreed, the sale was called off, and in January 2022 the church reopened as the Traditional Latin Apostolate of Saint Stanislaus at St. Hedwig's, the community assuming the building's costs. It is still there in October 2026 - High Mass on Sundays at 9:30 a.m., Low Mass on Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. - and the diocese's own 2023 pastoral plan describes St. Hedwig's as 'home to the Latin Mass Apostolate.' No Erie Mass was ended, and the community gained a dedicated church of its own.
The limits deserve stating. This was compliance, not resistance: he accepted the premise that the old Mass had to leave the parish church rather than dispensing from it as some brother bishops did, and the community bears its own building costs in a diocese of 10,167 square miles served by this single site. He has never publicly defended the old Missal, published no decree, and invited no traditional society. But judged by deeds, the Erie record is preservation by relocation - a bishop who, when the law took his people's church away, quietly found them another one, and saved a condemned building in the bargain.