Louis Frederick Kihneman
Louis Frederick Kihneman III was born on February 17, 1952, in Lafayette, Louisiana. He studied at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, earning degrees in religious education and theology, and attended St. Mary's Seminary in Houston. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Corpus Christi on November 18, 1977. His early ministry took him to San Isidro Labrador Parish in Arteaga, Mexico, in 1977, then to parishes in Robstown and Corpus Christi, Texas, before he became pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Alice in 1983.
From 1986 to 1993 he served the Corpus Christi diocese as director of vocations and seminarians, director of the St. John Vianney House of Studies, and in other formation and clergy roles, then returned to parish life as pastor of Sacred Heart in Rockport from 1993 to 2011, where the parish school grew and he received the National Catholic Education Association's Distinguished Pastor Award in 2011. He became vicar general in 2010 and pastor of St. Philip in Corpus Christi in 2014, and was known locally for weekly service at the Mother Teresa Shelter in Corpus Christi, where he served tacos and learned the names of the homeless people he met.
Pope Francis appointed him the fourth Bishop of Biloxi on December 16, 2016. His episcopal ordination, first planned for February 17, 2017, his sixty-fifth birthday, was postponed by surgery for diverticulitis, and he was ordained and installed at the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Biloxi on April 28, 2017, with the motto The Lord is my shepherd. He still holds the see in October 2026, shepherding a Gulf Coast diocese of 17 southern Mississippi counties.
- 2021-07-16Traditionis Custodes issued. No Biloxi statement by Kihneman on the motu proprio itself was located in the sources consulted, but within two weeks his diocese was publicly grouped with the dioceses granting a dispensation under it, as the next action records. ↗
- 2021-07-30Catholic News Agency reported that Biloxi joined San Bernardino, Springfield in Illinois, Toledo, Knoxville, San Angelo, and Wichita in granting priests a canonical dispensation from Traditionis Custodes Art. 3, section 2, the provision barring designation of a parochial church for the 1962 Missal. The advocacy tracker traditioniscustodes.info, used here as a lead only, records the fuller Biloxi wording: priests formerly entrusted with the celebrations and pastoral care continue to be entrusted, and priests who already celebrate with the 1962 Missal continue to enjoy the faculty upon request. ↗
- 2022-09-11A September 2022 bulletin notice advertised Extraordinary Form (Traditional Latin Mass) every Sunday at 12:30 p.m. at Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church, Bay St. Louis, in the Diocese of Biloxi, showing diocesan old-Mass provision continuing a year after the motu proprio under Kihneman. ↗
Biloxi is a preserved diocese on the strength of a governing act, not mere inertia. Within two weeks of Traditionis Custodes, Catholic News Agency grouped Biloxi with San Bernardino, Springfield in Illinois, Toledo, Knoxville, San Angelo, and Wichita as dioceses granting priests a canonical dispensation from Article 3, section 2 of the motu proprio, the provision that would otherwise bar a parochial church from being designated for the 1962 Missal. The fuller Biloxi wording, recorded by the advocacy tracker as a lead only and consistent with the CNA grouping, is that priests formerly entrusted with these celebrations and with the pastoral care of the faithful who attend them continue to be entrusted, and priests who already celebrate with the 1962 Missal continue to enjoy that faculty upon request. That is a bishop authorizing continuation, in the first fortnight of the new regime.
The provision that dispensation protected can be named. Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church in Bay St. Louis advertised an Extraordinary Form Mass every Sunday at 12:30 p.m. in bulletins before and after the motu proprio, including September 2022, and the parish music page fetched in October 2026 still lists the 12:30 p.m. Sunday Mass as the Traditional Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form), alternating a Low Mass and a Missa Cantata. The Mass therefore did not merely survive on paper in 2021; it was still being offered, at the same hour, five years later, under the same bishop.
The limits are stated plainly. No text of a Kihneman decree or letter was located in the sources consulted, so the dispensation rests on CNA's July 2021 grouping rather than on a fetched diocesan document, which is why confidence is medium rather than high. No exhaustive diocesan site list was found, so no integer count is claimed: one named diocesan site is established, and no other diocesan 1962-Missal site was found. The independent CMRI mission listed for Gulfport in traditional directories is not a diocesan site and counts for nothing here. Within those limits, what Bishop Kihneman did was preserve: he dispensed, and the Mass continued.