Mark Steven Rivituso
Mark Steven Rivituso was born on September 20, 1961, in St. Louis, Missouri, one of eight children. He studied at Cardinal Glennon College and Kenrick Seminary, earned a licentiate in canon law from St. Paul University in Ottawa in 1996, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis on January 16, 1988. His priesthood ran through canonical and administrative work: Archbishop Raymond Burke named him judicial vicar in 2005, and in 2011 he became vicar general and a pastor.
Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop of St. Louis on March 7, 2017, and he served under Archbishops Carlson and Rozanski. His one brush with the liturgy wars came in 2021, when as auxiliary he signed the letter that left the thriving St. Barnabas parish with a single Traditional Latin Mass and no new pastor - a consolidation Rozanski completed in 2023 by closing the parish outright. On July 1, 2025, Pope Leo XIV appointed him the third Archbishop of Mobile, Alabama, succeeding Thomas Rodi, and he was installed on September 3, 2025.
His motto is 'Caritas Christi urget nos' - the love of Christ compels us - and his installation homily cast his flock as 'ministers of hope' to the poor, the homeless, immigrants and prisoners. In Mobile he inherited his predecessor's 2021 decree capping the old Mass at twice-monthly celebrations by two grandfathered priests, with no Fraternity or Institute apostolate in the archdiocese. He has issued no decree of his own on the matter: on the old Mass, his record so far is the record he inherited.
What Rivituso inherits in Mobile is entirely his predecessor's work. Archbishop Thomas Rodi's 2021 decree capped the 1962 Mass to twice monthly by two grandfathered priests — Montgomery and Whistler — with no FSSP or ICKSP apostolate anywhere in the archdiocese, and that cap remains in force. Rivituso has issued no new liturgical decree since his September 2025 installation, so nothing has expanded and nothing has been further cut on his watch.
His own record comes from St. Louis, and it is genuinely mixed. As auxiliary in 2021 he signed the letter that, after St. Barnabas's pastor retired, assigned no replacement and reduced the parish to a single Traditional Latin Mass — which in practice made it a thriving TLM center. But it was Archbishop Rozanski, not Rivituso, who closed St. Barnabas in 2023 under Traditionis Custodes. Rivituso was an instrument of the chancery's handling of tradition, not the author of its suppression, and his homiletic voice runs pastoral and social-justice — the poor, immigrants, prisoners, hope. A canon lawyer first, appointed judicial vicar by Cardinal Burke, he is hard to read as an ideologue in either direction.
The honest verdict is too early to judge, leaning cautious. There is no evidence he is a champion of the old Mass and none that he is a crusader against it; he inherits a restrictive but stable arrangement and has so far left it in place. The tell will be his first concrete liturgical act — whether he renews or narrows the two grandfathered permissions, lets a successor priest take them up, or shows any openness to the older form.