Paul Stagg Coakley
Paul Stagg Coakley was born June 3, 1955, in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in Metairie, Louisiana, and Overland Park, Kansas. He earned a B.A. in English and Classical Antiquities from the University of Kansas in 1977, where he was formed in the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program run by John Senior -- a great-books, Latin, and classical-culture program famous for producing traditional-leaning Catholic clergy; his KU roommate was the future Bishop James Conley of Lincoln. He completed seminary at Mount St. Mary's, Emmitsburg (M.Div. 1983), and earned a Licentiate of Sacred Theology at the Gregorian University in Rome (1987).
Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Wichita on May 21, 1983, Coakley served there 21 years. Pope John Paul II named him the ninth Bishop of Salina on October 21, 2004 (consecrated December 28, 2004; motto Duc in altum). Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Archbishop of Oklahoma City on December 16, 2010; he was installed February 11, 2011, succeeding Eusebius Beltran.
In the USCCB, Coakley was elected Conference Secretary on November 15, 2022, and was elected President of the USCCB on November 11, 2025, defeating Bishop Daniel Flores; he was widely described as the leading conservative candidate. He has chaired the board of Catholic Relief Services since 2013. As archbishop he oversaw the 2017 beatification of Bl. Stanley Rother, the first U.S.-born martyr, and dedicated the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine, the largest Catholic church in Oklahoma, on February 17, 2023.
On the deeds, Coakley reads as a friend of the traditional liturgy operating within the limits Rome imposed. When Traditionis Custodes dropped in July 2021, he did not suppress or cap the old Mass; he issued same-day temporary permission for competent priests to keep offering it where it was already scheduled, pending study, treating the faithful's continued access as the default. Throughout the restriction era the Fraternity of St. Peter's apostolate at St. Damien of Molokai in Edmond, a personal parish offering the Traditional Latin Mass and all sacraments daily according to the 1962 books, has continued uninterrupted -- the only such daily provision in the archdiocese.
The one concrete loss, the weekday and monthly-Sunday diocesan TLM at St. Monica parish, ended in June 2023, but that was driven by Rome: the Dicastery for Divine Worship under Cardinal Roche declined to renew the dispensation for a diocesan TLM in a parish church. Coakley did not initiate it, and displaced faithful simply moved to the FSSP's St. Damien, where daily access remains. There is no record of Coakley closing the FSSP apostolate, banning ad orientem, forbidding altar rails, or restricting traditional sacramental practice -- the punitive moves seen in less friendly dioceses.
His own formation reinforces the read. Coakley was shaped by John Senior's Integrated Humanities Program at Kansas, a Latin-and-classics, tradition-soaked milieu that fed the FSSP and traditional Catholicism, and he was the college roommate of Bishop James Conley, one of the American episcopate's clearest friends of the old rite. Oklahoma City also carries a strong traditional and missionary Catholic identity anchored by Bl. Stanley Rother, whose cause and shrine Coakley championed. Net verdict: a fairly conservative, orthodox archbishop who preserved the Traditional Latin Mass to the maximum extent Roman law allowed, ceding ground only where Rome forced it -- a friend, with the caveat that he is an institutional loyalist who obeys Roman directives rather than resisting them.