Peter Baldacchino
Peter Baldacchino was born on December 5, 1960, in Sliema, Malta, the second of four children of Rene and Hilda Baldacchino. His family belonged to the Neocatechumenal Way, and that community shaped his vocation: after a science degree at the University of Malta and work managing a Canada Dry bottling plant, he was sent by lot to the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Newark, New Jersey, studying at Seton Hall's Immaculate Conception Seminary. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Newark on May 25, 1996, by Archbishop Theodore McCarrick.
He spent more than a decade as a missionary priest in the Turks and Caicos Islands, building a church in Providenciales and the islands' only Catholic school. In 2014 Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop of Miami - the first bishop in the United States formed in the Neocatechumenal Way, and the first Redemptoris Mater graduate to become a diocesan bishop on the U.S. mainland. He was ordained a bishop on March 19, 2014, and served as pastor of St. Kieran Parish in Coconut Grove.
On May 15, 2019, he was named the third Bishop of Las Cruces, and he was installed on July 23, 2019, at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, succeeding Apostolic Administrator Gerald Kicanas. He governs a border diocese of ten southern New Mexico counties, working in English, Spanish, Italian, Creole and Maltese. His episcopal motto is Ubi dominus ibidem laetitia - "Where the Lord is, there is joy."
No Traditional Latin Mass offered under diocesan authority, and no decree or statement by Bishop Baldacchino on the old Mass, has been found in the sources consulted. The CNA survey of diocesan responses in July 2021 lists Las Cruces as N/A, and no FSSP, ICKSP, or other society apostolate serves the old Mass within the diocese.
The region's FSSP parish, Immaculate Conception in El Paso, belongs to the Diocese of El Paso, where it was established under Bishop Mark Seitz; it draws some faithful from southern New Mexico but is not a Las Cruces site and forms no part of his record. An unattributed parish-bulletin snippet listing a "Latin Mass" could not be tied to a Las Cruces parish or to the 1962 form and is not counted. His posture is no_record, plainly.