Michael Pham
Michael Cuong Minh Pham was born in 1967 in Da Nang, South Vietnam. In 1980, at thirteen, he fled by boat amid the post-war exodus, spent time in a Malaysian refugee camp, and was resettled in the United States in 1981. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of San Diego in 1999 and later served as vicar general.
Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop of San Diego in 2023. On May 22, 2025, Pope Leo XIV named him the seventh Bishop of San Diego — Leo's first U.S. episcopal appointment — succeeding Cardinal Robert McElroy. He is the first Vietnamese-American to lead a U.S. diocese, and his early ministry has centered on immigration and refugee solidarity.
Bishop Pham is too new, and his public ministry too narrowly focused, to permit a verdict on his treatment of the ancient Mass. Installed only in the summer of 2025, he has said and done nothing yet, on the public record, that touches the Traditional Latin Mass in San Diego. His energies have gone elsewhere — chiefly to immigration and the refugees with whom he shares a history, having himself fled Vietnam as a boy on a boat.
What can be said is the context he inherits. Under his predecessor, Cardinal McElroy, San Diego restricted the older rite early and firmly — ending it at the territorial parishes and confining it to the Fraternity of St. Peter's parish. Pham served in the chancery during those years, though nothing ties him personally to the decisions. Whether he continues that restrictive posture, eases it, or tightens it further, no one yet knows.
We withhold judgment honestly. There is, as yet, no record to weigh. The traditional Catholic of San Diego may hope that a man who knows what it is to be displaced will have sympathy for a displaced flock — but hope is not evidence, and on this question it is simply too early to judge.