Mark Steven Rivituso
Mark Steven Rivituso was born September 20, 1961, in St. Louis, Missouri, one of eight children. He studied at Cardinal Glennon College and Kenrick Seminary and earned a Licentiate in Canon Law from St. Paul University in Ottawa (1996). He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis on January 16, 1988.
His priesthood ran through canonical and administrative roles rather than academia or public liturgical advocacy: Archbishop Raymond Burke named him judicial vicar in 2005, and he became vicar general and a pastor in 2011. He is a canon lawyer and chancery administrator by formation.
Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop of St. Louis in 2017; he served under Archbishops Carlson and Rozanski. On July 1, 2025, Pope Leo XIV appointed him the third Archbishop of Mobile, Alabama, and he was installed September 3, 2025, succeeding Archbishop Thomas Rodi. His motto is 'Caritas Christi urget nos.' He remains the sitting archbishop as of mid-2026.
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.