Michael William Fisher
Michael William Fisher was born on March 3, 1958, in Baltimore, Maryland, the eldest of five children. As a boy he delivered newspapers for The Baltimore Sun, played Little League, wrestled, and rose to Eagle Scout. He attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and accounting from the University of Maryland in 1984, and worked as a comptroller for a psychiatric practice in Bethesda. He entered Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg in 1986 and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington on June 23, 1990.
His Washington ministry was parochial first and administrative after: parochial vicar at Sacred Heart in La Plata, pastor of Holy Family in Hillcrest Heights from 1995 and of St. John Neumann in Gaithersburg from 1999, then vicar general for the apostolates in 2005 and vicar for clergy and secretary for ministerial leadership from 2006, a post he held for twelve years overseeing clergy care. Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop of Washington on June 8, 2018, and he was ordained a bishop on June 29, 2018.
Pope Francis appointed him the fifteenth Bishop of Buffalo on December 1, 2020, and he was installed at the Cathedral of St. Joseph on January 15, 2021, taking over a diocese already in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. His Buffalo years have been dominated by that inheritance: the Road to Renewal parish restructuring, finalized in September 2024, and the long negotiation toward a $150 million abuse settlement reached in principle in April 2025. His motto is 'In faithfulness and love.' He still holds the see in October 2026.
- 2021-07-21Five days after Traditionis Custodes, Fisher granted temporary permission for priests competent in celebrating the Eucharist according to the 1962 Missal to continue to do so at the times and places that, as of July 16, 2021, had publicly scheduled these Masses. This is a governing act of the ordinary himself, reported verbatim by Catholic News Agency. ↗
- 2025-02-04Fisher established St. Anthony of Padua in Buffalo as an oratory to minister to the traditional Latin Mass and the Roman Catholic Italian-speaking communities, giving the diocese's traditional community a dedicated canonical home in the middle of the Road to Renewal merger program. ↗
- 2025-03-25Fr. Augustine Hoa Trung Tran took up the appointment as rector of St. Anthony of Padua Oratory, effective March 25, 2025, under Fisher's erection of the oratory. ↗
- 2025-08-17The oratory's bulletin shows the traditional provision in place under Fisher's erection: Sunday 7:15 a.m. Latin Low and 9:15 a.m. Latin Sung Masses, weekday 6 p.m. Latin Low Masses, and a Saturday 9 a.m. Latin Low Mass, dated by the Sundays-after-Pentecost calendar of the old rite. ↗
Buffalo is a preserved diocese, and the preservation rests on two dated acts of Bishop Fisher's own, not on inertia. The first came five days after Traditionis Custodes: on July 21, 2021, Fisher granted priests competent in the 1962 Missal temporary permission to continue celebrating it at the times and places publicly scheduled as of July 16, 2021. That is the governing act the preserved verdict requires - an authorization, in writing, from the ordinary himself, reported verbatim by Catholic News Agency and recorded in the National Catholic Register's diocese-by-diocese tracker. Nothing in the TC era shows Fisher withdrawing it, and no Buffalo site was suppressed on his watch.
The second act, four years later, is the stronger one. On February 4, 2025, Fisher established St. Anthony of Padua in Buffalo as an oratory expressly to minister to the traditional Latin Mass and the Italian-speaking communities, and he appointed Fr. Augustine Hoa Trung Tran its rector effective March 25, 2025. A bishop does not erect a canonical home for a traditional community in the middle of a diocese-wide merger program by accident. The oratory's own bulletins show the fruit: a daily traditional calendar, with Sunday Low and Sung Masses, weekday evening Low Masses, and a Saturday morning Low Mass, in the Sundays-after-Pentecost reckoning of the old calendar.
The limits keep this verdict at preserved rather than expanded. St. Anthony's traditional Masses long predate Fisher - the parish was already one of Buffalo's two licit Latin Mass sites in 2007 - so the oratory formalized and secured an existing community rather than founding a new one, and no new Mass site attributable to Fisher has been found. The second licit site, the Maria Hilf Chapel of Our Lady Help of Christians in Cheektowaga, is listed by the parish family as offering the Latin (Tridentine) Mass, but the latest direct parish evidence fetched for it dates to March 2022, so the current site count is carried with that debt stated. No Ecclesia Dei society apostolate serves in the diocese on any evidence found.