Michael G. Woost
Michael Gerard Woost was born on September 17, 1958, in Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up in a household where faith was the centerpiece and prayer before and after meals was routine. He attended Saint Ignatius High School, graduating in 1976, then Borromeo Seminary in Wickliffe, earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1980. He continued at Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology, receiving a Master of Divinity in 1984 and a Master of Arts in systematic theology in 1986, and later a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from The Catholic University of America in 2000. Two of his brothers, Dave and Tom, are also priests of the Diocese of Cleveland.
He was ordained a priest of Cleveland on June 9, 1984, and served as parochial vicar at Immaculate Conception Parish in Madison. He then co-directed the diocesan Vocation Office until 1995, before graduate study in Washington. From 2000 he taught sacramental and liturgical theology at Saint Mary Seminary, where he also chaired the Department of Liturgical and Sacramental Theology, served as dean of students and formation advisor, and directed the seminary liturgy as master of ceremonies. Early in 2022 Bishop Edward Malesic named him interim director of the diocesan Office for Worship.
Pope Francis appointed him an auxiliary bishop of Cleveland on May 9, 2022, and he was consecrated on August 4, 2022, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, with Bishop Malesic as principal consecrator. As auxiliary he assists across the eight-county diocese, including presiding at confirmations, while continuing to live at the seminary, and he still held the office in October 2026.
Michael Woost has no recorded posture on the 1962 Missal, because no governing act of his own on it has been found. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of Cleveland on May 9, 2022, under Bishop Edward Malesic, and he serves as an auxiliary, not as the ordinary who decides diocesan permissions under Traditionis Custodes. Searches for a statement, decree, permission, or letter of his on the old Mass in 2022-2026 returned nothing attributable to him, so his tenure is filed no_record at medium confidence: absence searched for, not assumed. His early-2022 stint as interim director of the diocesan Office for Worship was noted and checked, and it produced no 1962-Missal decision of his either.
What exists in Cleveland is an inheritance, and it belongs to Malesic, not to Woost. The diocesan provision is two celebrations said by diocesan priests, at Saint Mary in Akron and Saint Stephen in Cleveland, not a society apostolate. In October 2025 the Holy See granted a two-year extension for those two celebrations, confirmed by the diocese to Catholic News Agency; the request was the ordinary's, and the extension runs to 2027, so the provision was in force at the October 2026 as-of date. Because the October 2025 reporting names exactly two celebrations, sites_now is 2, while sites_before is null, since no source consulted counts the provision before the motu proprio.
The board row for Cleveland agrees in direction but must not be confused with Woost's record: it records the diocese as preserved at high confidence under Malesic, citing the same October 2025 extension. Woost's no_record says nothing against that row, because the row belongs to the ordinary and this dossier measures only the auxiliary's own acts. A future governing act of Woost's own on the 1962 Missal would be the only thing that could move his tenure off no_record; the diocese's provision continuing under Malesic would not, on its own, do so.