Paul Fitzpatrick Russell
Paul Fitzpatrick Russell was born May 2, 1959, in Greenfield, Massachusetts. He grew up partly in Alpena, in northern Michigan's Diocese of Gaylord, studied at Saint John's Seminary in Boston, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston on June 20, 1987, by Cardinal Bernard Law.
In 1993, while serving as priest-secretary to the Archbishop of Boston, Russell was invited into the diplomatic service of the Holy See. He studied at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and earned a doctorate in canon law from the Gregorian University. Entering the Vatican Diplomatic Service in 1997, he served over two decades in the nunciatures to Ethiopia, Turkey, Switzerland, and Nigeria, and as charge d'affaires in Taiwan. He is fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, and German.
On March 19, 2016, Pope Francis appointed Russell Apostolic Nuncio to Turkey and Turkmenistan and titular Archbishop of Novi; Azerbaijan was added in 2018. He resigned the nunciature on February 2, 2022, and on May 23, 2022, Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit, permitting him to retain the personal title of archbishop. He was installed July 7, 2022. Weeks later, in August 2022, he stepped back from all public ministry after a civil lawsuit alleged abuse dating to his years as a Boston priest; he has denied the allegation and has remained out of public ministry since. As of mid-2026 that withdrawal continues.
Archbishop Russell has essentially no public record on the Traditional Latin Mass, and there is no principled way to manufacture one. He spent his priesthood in Vatican diplomacy abroad, not in parish or liturgical leadership, and he was an auxiliary in Detroit for only a few weeks of active ministry before stepping aside in August 2022. He has published no liturgical teaching and issued no known statement on Traditionis Custodes, the 1962 Missal, or the traditional communities.
Crucially, the 2025 suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass in the Archdiocese of Detroit -- cutting parish TLM locations from roughly 28 down to four and restricting outdoor celebrations by a July 1, 2025 deadline -- is the act of the ordinary Archbishop, Edward Weisenburger, following the trajectory set under his predecessor Allen Vigneron. It is not attributable to Russell. As a mere auxiliary he holds no ordinary jurisdiction and no authority over the archdiocese's liturgical policy; the Institute of Christ the King's St. Joseph Shrine remains the surviving TLM stronghold, a matter governed by the ordinary, not by him.
The honest verdict is that his record is too thin to classify. He is neither a documented friend nor a documented foe of the traditional liturgy -- he is a career diplomat whose active pastoral ministry was cut short before any liturgical stance emerged. Any claim placing him for or against the TLM in Detroit would be unsupported; the suppression belongs to Weisenburger, and Russell's own liturgical mind remains, on the public record, unknown.