Mark Leonard Bartchak
Mark Leonard Bartchak was born on January 1, 1955, in Cleveland, Ohio, the fifth of eight children of Leonard Bartchak and Rosemary (nee Beck) Bartchak-Shay, founding members of St. Monica Parish in Garfield Heights, where he was baptized. His mother was German and Irish, his father Polish. He graduated in 1973 from Bradford Central Christian High School, earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from St. Mark Seminary and Gannon University in Erie in 1977, and a master's degree in theology from Christ the King Seminary in East Aurora in 1981.
Ordained a priest of Erie on May 15, 1981, he served as parochial vicar in Warren, Clearfield, and Ridgway. His other thread was the tribunal: Defender of the Bond in 1982, full-time tribunal work from 1986, judicial vicar in 1992, and vicar for canonical affairs in 2004, with a licentiate in canon law in 1989 and a doctorate in 1992 from The Catholic University of America. He is a past president of the Canon Law Society of America and has lectured in canon law at Catholic University, Lublin, and Ottawa.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Bishop of Altoona-Johnstown on January 14, 2011, and was consecrated and installed as its eighth bishop on April 19, 2011, at Altoona's Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. In December 2018 he disclosed $21.5 million in diocesan settlements to abuse victims and apologized to all who had suffered. In June 2021 Pope Francis named him a member of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Holy See's highest court. His motto is 'Christ our hope of glory.' He still holds the see in October 2026.
- 2021-07In July 2021, following Traditionis Custodes, Bartchak limited celebration of the old-rite Mass to Sundays only and instructed clergy to administer the sacraments, including baptisms and funerals, in English, according to local press reporting relayed by the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny. Sunday Masses continued on the restricted schedule; weekday and holy-day old-rite Masses, and traditional-form sacraments, were cut. The diocesan letter itself was not found on the diocesan website, which the relaying source itself notes, so this act is carried at medium confidence, not high. ↗
- 2021-10Reaction, not an act of Bartchak: traditional faithful in the diocese opened discussions with the Society of St. Pius X, and Fr. Richard Boyle of the SSPX priory in Warners, New York, visited Centre and Blair counties for presentations, confessions, and a sung traditional Mass at the Altoona Grand Hotel, sponsored by Latin Mass societies in Spring Cove, Johnstown, State College, and University Park. The visit is evidence of the restriction's effect on the faithful, not of any further act by the bishop. ↗
Altoona-Johnstown is a reduced diocese, on a single reported act of Bishop Bartchak's own in July 2021. Following Traditionis Custodes, Bartchak limited celebration of the old-rite Mass to Sundays only and instructed clergy to administer the sacraments, including baptisms and funerals, in English, according to local press reporting relayed by the Society of St. Hugh of Cluny. Sunday Masses continued on the restricted schedule - this was not a suppression - but weekday and holy-day old-rite Masses ended, and the traditional forms of the other sacraments were withdrawn. A cut in days and in sacramental forms, imposed by the ordinary, is a reduction of provision, and that is the verdict: reduced, not restricted, because provision was actually lost rather than merely confined to new venues under continuing rules.
The sourcing must be stated as plainly as the verdict, because it is the dossier's weakest point. The diocesan letter setting out these rules has not been found on the diocesan website - the relaying source itself says so - and no fetched diocesan text carries the limitation. What carries it is local press reporting, relayed in October 2021, converging with the project's own board row, which records the same Sundays-only limitation at medium confidence, and with the visible reaction: within months, the diocese's traditional faithful were meeting a visiting Society of St. Pius X priest in State College and Altoona to preserve access to the Mass and sacraments in the traditional forms. That convergence is enough for reduced at medium confidence; it is not enough for high, and the dossier does not pretend otherwise.
Two cautions complete the picture. First, the pre-TC baseline is thin: the societies named in the October 2021 reporting - Spring Cove, Johnstown, State College, University Park - show a provision spread across the diocese, but no source counts its sites or Masses, so no integer loss can be stated and both site counts stand at null. Second, nothing in the TC era shows Bartchak restoring, widening, or re-authorizing what was cut, and no current 1962-Missal parish schedule in the diocese was fetched for this draft. The reduction of July 2021 stands as his TC-era record.