Michael Francis Burbidge
Michael Francis Burbidge was born on June 16, 1957, in Philadelphia, and ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in 1984. An educator by training — he holds a master's in education administration from Villanova and a doctorate in education from Immaculata — he served as an auxiliary bishop of Philadelphia from 2002, and Pope Benedict XVI named him Bishop of Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2006.
In 2016 Pope Francis appointed him the fourth Bishop of Arlington, Virginia, one of the most vibrant and traditional dioceses in the country; he later chaired the U.S. bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities from 2022 to 2024. Arlington had one of the largest Traditional Latin Mass footprints in America — twenty-one parishes — and so Burbidge's implementation of the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes became one of the most closely watched in the nation, and one of the most painful for the faithful attached to the old rite.
Bishop Burbidge is the case that resists a simple verdict, and honesty demands we resist it too. The trad question — did he protect the old Mass or take the knife to it? — he answered, in 2022, with a knife held reluctantly. His instruction cut the Traditional Latin Mass in Arlington from twenty-one parishes to eight, pushed five of those out of their churches and into school halls, and forbade the survivors even to print their Mass times. For a diocese that was a national stronghold of the old rite, the blow was real, and the faithful who were 'devastated' by it were not wrong to grieve.
And yet the man who swung that knife did not want to. Unlike the bishops who reached for Traditionis Custodes as a long-awaited weapon, Burbidge framed his obedience without a trace of contempt for the old Mass — and his most revealing words were not about the faithful but about himself: 'The Lord is giving me an opportunity to grow in holiness, because I am letting go of my will here.' That is the language of a man executing an order he would not have written, not a partisan settling scores. He studied the law with his pastors before acting, fought Rome for a dispensation to keep eight celebrations alive, allowed them ad orientem, and in 2026 went further — establishing a chaplaincy and bringing the FSSP into the diocese to serve the very community he had been forced to constrain.
So the just verdict is a mixed one, and it should be given without spin in either direction. He contracted the old Mass and muzzled its advertisement; that cannot be waved away. But he did so as an obedient son enforcing a Roman policy, softened every edge he was permitted to soften, and has since opened a door rather than bolting it. Not a champion of Tradition — but not its enemy either. A shepherd caught between a law he was bound to obey and a flock he plainly did not wish to wound.