Mark J. Seitz
Mark Joseph Seitz was born on January 10, 1954, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the eldest of ten children. He began priestly formation at Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, Texas, in 1972 and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Dallas on May 17, 1980. He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Dallas and earned a master's degree in liturgical studies from Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, in 1985. In Dallas he was pastor at Saint Joseph in Waxahachie and Saint Rita, taught and formed seminarians, and in 2009 donated a kidney to one of his Saint Rita parishioners.
Pope Benedict XVI named him an auxiliary bishop of Dallas on March 11, 2010, and he was consecrated on April 27, 2010, taking as his motto Paratum cor meum, my heart is ready. Pope Francis appointed him the sixth Bishop of El Paso on May 6, 2013, and he was installed on July 9, 2013, at Saint Patrick Cathedral. The see is a border diocese of ten counties facing Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande, with more than 650,000 Catholics, and that border has shaped his whole episcopate.
Seitz is best known nationally as a voice on migration: he was elected chairman of the United States bishops' Committee on Migration in November 2021, he has celebrated the annual binational border Mass for migrants who died crossing, and his pastoral letters have pressed for humane treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, including a 2026 message calling mass deportation and mass detention a grave moral evil. At home he published, in January 2019, the names of thirty diocesan clergy credibly accused of abusing minors.
- 2014PRE-TC CONTEXT: Seitz invited the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter to administer Immaculate Conception Church, El Paso; the Fraternity began serving there in August 2014. Dated context only; it does not set the TC-era posture. ↗
- 2021TRACKER REPORT ONLY: the Traditionis Custodes tracker reports that Seitz reached out to the Fraternity parish, assured it of his support, and did not foresee anything changing as a consequence of the motu proprio. No diocesan statement or letter carrying this assurance was retrieved; it is recorded here as a report, not as a governing act. ↗
- 2026The diocese's published 2026 clerical assignments list names Rev. David Carter, FSSP, as parochial vicar of Immaculate Conception Church. Recorded as a staffing fact: Fraternity assignments originate with the Fraternity, and the listing does not show a TC-era decision by Seitz about the old Mass itself, so it is not counted as a governing act. ↗
- 2026CONTINUATION, NOT AN ACT: Immaculate Conception's published schedule still shows daily Masses and Sunday Masses at 8 a.m., 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. as Latin Masses, and the parish presents itself as El Paso's Latin Mass parish. Continuation with no governing act is the reason for no_record, not for preserved. ↗
On the old Mass, Bishop Seitz's record divides sharply at Traditionis Custodes. Before it, he was its patron in El Paso: in 2014 he invited the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter to administer Immaculate Conception Church in downtown El Paso, giving the diocese a full traditional parish with daily and Sunday Masses in the 1962 Missal. That invitation, and his 2014 statement that a stable community attached to the Tridentine form has a right to celebrate the sacraments in that way, are the strongest traditional acts of his episcopate, and they both predate the motu proprio by seven years.
In the TC era itself, the parish has simply continued: the Fraternity still staffs Immaculate Conception, its published schedule still shows daily and Sunday Latin Masses, and the diocese's 2026 clerical assignments list still names a Fraternity priest as parochial vicar there. What has not been found is any TC-era decree, authorization letter or Rome dispensation in Seitz's name. The often-repeated report that he reached out after July 2021 to assure the parish of his support and foresee no change rests on the Traditionis Custodes tracker alone, and under this project's rules a second-hand assurance is not a governing act.
That is why the honest verdict is no_record rather than preserved. It is not a verdict that Seitz restricted anything: nothing was suppressed, no site closed, and no restriction on the Fraternity's parish has surfaced. It is a verdict that, in the TC era, he has left no governing act of his own on the old Mass for a panel to cite, and the panel says so instead of dressing continuation up as a decision. If a diocesan implementation document exists offline, this verdict should be revisited.