Peter Anthony Libasci
Peter Anthony Libasci was born on November 9, 1951, in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. As a boy at St. Margaret School in Middle Village he cleaned the church on Friday afternoons and sang in the parish choir, and he later said that was where he began learning the liturgy. He studied at Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Elmhurst, at St. John's University, and at Saint Meinrad in Indiana.
Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on April 1, 1978, he spent three decades in Long Island parishes, eleven years of them as administrator and then pastor in Inwood, and built a new church at Montauk. Named a monsignor in 2004, he became an auxiliary bishop in 2007. He is a bi-ritual priest, holding faculties for the Divine Liturgy of the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church as well as the Latin rite.
Pope Benedict XVI named him the tenth Bishop of Manchester on September 19, 2011, and he was installed at St. Joseph Cathedral on December 8, becoming shepherd of New Hampshire's only diocese, which covers the whole state. He was still governing the diocese in October 2026, a fortnight short of his seventy-fifth birthday.
- 2016-08-07Pre-TC context: first Sunday Mass at St. Stanislaus, Nashua, the personal parish he had erected and entrusted to the FSSP after researching communities and inviting the Fraternity in; some 450 attended. He had announced it in May 2016 as a parish 'dedicated to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.' ↗
- 2019Pre-TC context: he arranged a weekly celebration of the Extraordinary Form at St. Stanislaus, 80 Richmond Road, Winchester, on Sundays at 7:45 a.m., in his pastoral care for the souls of those who work, live at, or reside near the Saint Benedict Center in Richmond (diocesan FAQ, undated text still current in 2026). ↗
- 2021-07-16Letter on Traditionis Custodes, written the day the motu proprio took effect and posted by a diocesan parish on July 17: he restated the motu proprio's articles, noted that priests already celebrating the 1962 Missal must now request the faculty from him and that priests ordained after that date require consultation with the Apostolic See, noted that the Ecclesia Dei institutes pass to the competence of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, and said 'I will begin to consult with you on the issues that the Holy Father raises.' The letter announced no closure, no consolidation, no deadline and no new condition on any site. ↗
- 2021-07-16On the same day, after negotiations followed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he erected St. Stanislaus, Winchester, as a personal parish dedicated to the usus antiquior and entrusted it to the Institute of the Good Shepherd, and at the same time authorized the canonical erection of a house of the Institute. Fr. Hugues Beaugrand, pastor and house superior, took office on September 10, 2021. The act canonically strengthened an existing Mass location; it added no new location. ↗
- 2026Continuity verified at the end of the window: the diocese's own Latin Mass listing shows exactly the same two parishes -- Nashua (FSSP; Sunday Low Mass 7 a.m., High Masses 8:45 and 11:15 a.m.) and Winchester (IBP; Sunday Low Mass 8:30 a.m., High Mass 10:30 a.m.) -- each with weekday Traditional Latin Masses, and Winchester's bulletins through 2026 show daily celebration continuing. No closure, relocation or added condition at either site was found in any source consulted for 2021-2026. ↗
- 2026-05-10Winchester's parish bulletin announced that Bishop Libasci would visit St. Stanislaus on May 10 to confer the sacrament of Confirmation and attend the Mass during which first Holy Communion would be given -- personal pastoral presence at the IBP parish five years into the TC era. ↗
Peter Libasci did not inherit a Latin Mass landscape in New Hampshire; he built one. Hearing, as he put it in 2016, from many Catholics with 'a deep affection for the traditional liturgical forms of the pre-Vatican II era,' he reopened the closed Polish church of St. Stanislaus in Nashua as a personal parish for the Extraordinary Form and handed it to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. The Fraternity's own account stresses the personal bond: he was there to greet the first pastor, sat in choir during Holy Week, and drops in unannounced. By 2019 he had also arranged a Sunday Latin Mass at Winchester, in the far southwest of the state, for the faithful living near the Saint Benedict Center.
When Traditionis Custodes came on July 16, 2021, his letter to his priests announced no closure, no consolidation and no deadline: he restated the motu proprio, noted that priests already celebrating the 1962 Missal must now request the faculty, and promised to begin consulting with them. On that same day, July 16, 2021, after negotiations followed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he erected Winchester as a personal parish dedicated to the usus antiquior and entrusted it to a second Ecclesia Dei institute, the Institute of the Good Shepherd, authorizing a house of the Institute as well. Both parishes then continued untouched through the whole TC era: the diocese's own Latin Mass listing still shows exactly those two parishes, each with daily Mass and two or three Sunday Masses, and no other diocesan site was closed, because there was no other diocesan site to close.
The caveats belong on the record. Libasci never defended the old Mass in principle against the motu proprio: his 2021 letter endorses Pope Francis's framing of division and even presents the new faculty regime as normal, comparing it to the five-yearly renewal of his own bi-ritual faculties. His provision is also narrow and personal -- two institute parishes in the south of a large state, both founded by him, with no published implementation decree and no diocesan-priest Latin Mass in the diocesan listing. His firmness in the same years fell not on the old Mass but on doctrine: the Richmond community that would not yield on 'no salvation outside the Church' got precepts, while the faithful who simply wanted the old Mass in communion with their bishop got, from this bishop, two parishes. Judged by his deeds across 2021-2026 -- nothing suppressed, one parish canonically strengthened on the very day of Traditionis Custodes -- he is a friend of Tradition, of the quiet, institution-building kind.