Peter F. Christensen
Peter Forsyth Christensen was born on December 24, 1952, in Pasadena, California, the fourth of eight children of Robert and Ann Christensen, and grew up in Palos Verdes. After a short spell at the College of the Redwoods in Eureka, which he left in 1975, he moved with his mother and siblings to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, took a bachelor's degree in history at the University of Saint Thomas, and worked for a time as a graphic designer. Deciding for the priesthood, he entered Saint Paul Seminary in 1981, spent a semester studying in Israel, and earned a Master of Divinity degree.
Ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis by Archbishop John Roach on May 25, 1985, he served as associate pastor of Saint Olaf Parish in Minneapolis, then as spiritual director of Saint John Vianney College Seminary in 1989 and its rector from 1992 to 1999. From 1999 to 2007 he was pastor of Nativity of Our Lord Parish in Saint Paul, where he fostered perpetual Eucharistic adoration and rebuilt the church and rectory. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him Bishop of Superior, Wisconsin, on June 28, 2007; he was consecrated on September 14 and installed on September 23 of that year.
Pope Francis appointed him the eighth Bishop of Boise City, Idaho, on November 4, 2014, succeeding the retiring Bishop Michael Driscoll, and he was installed at Saint John's Cathedral, Boise, on December 17, 2014. The diocese covers the whole state of Idaho, and he has led it ever since, giving firm liturgical direction while the two established Traditional Latin Mass communities, in the north and the southwest of the state, continued.
- 2019-03-10CONTEXT, pre-TC: at the request of the Treasure Valley Latin Mass Society, Christensen established a regular Traditional Latin Mass on the second Sunday of each month at Saint Paul Catholic Church, Nampa. Nampa had had no regular Traditional Latin Mass since 1996. This act predates Traditionis Custodes and does not move the posture; it explains what the TC-era determination preserved. ↗
- 2020-02-28CONTEXT, pre-TC: Christensen wrote to his priests instructing them to preside facing the people at every Ordinary Form Mass, not to use kneelers or Communion rails that might encourage kneeling for Communion, to notify him when celebrating the Extraordinary Form, and not to import elements of one Missal's use into the other. The letter was published in the Idaho Catholic Register on March 27, 2020. It is a liturgical-direction act, not a determination on the 1962 Missal's availability. (Cited to the Wayback capture: the original CNA URL was retired when CNA moved to EWTN News and now redirects to a home page.) ↗
- 2021TRACKER-REPORTED determination, NOT VERIFIED, date not recovered beyond the year: a diocesan determination, quoted in the Traditionis Custodes tracker, holds that the priests of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, in situ at Saint Joan of Arc Parish in Coeur d'Alene, do not deny the validity and legitimacy of the liturgical reform and therefore may continue to use the 1962 Roman Missal in that parish solely, and that the Saint Paul's Treasure Valley Latin Mass Society, an apostolate of Saint Paul's Catholic Community in Nampa, is effective for the spiritual growth of the faithful and may therefore continue its current practice. The tracker gives no promulgation date and the original document was not recovered; the determination is therefore rated medium and is corroborated, not replaced, by the current parish evidence below. ↗
- 2026-10-24CURRENT EVIDENCE, fetched for this draft: Saint Joan of Arc's own site states that the parish operates with the approval of the Bishop of Boise, is served by Fraternity priests, and celebrates all Masses and sacraments according to the liturgical books of 1962, with five Sunday Masses and daily Masses. The Nampa second-Sunday Extraordinary Form listing also remains in the directory record. Together these show the two sites surviving into late 2026 with the bishop's approval. ↗
Boise entered the Traditionis Custodes era with two distinct Traditional Latin Mass footholds, both of them Christensen's own pre-TC work or inheritance: a Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter parish in the Idaho panhandle, and a monthly diocesan Mass at Saint Paul Parish in Nampa, in the Treasure Valley, which Christensen himself established in March 2019 at the request of the Treasure Valley Latin Mass Society after the area had gone without a regular Traditional Mass since 1996. Catholic News Agency reported in 2020 that at least two parishes in the diocese offered the Extraordinary Form, one of them administered by the Fraternity.
In the TC era both footholds survived under his permission. A diocesan determination quoted in the Traditionis Custodes tracker holds that the Fraternity priests at Saint Joan of Arc Parish may continue to use the 1962 Roman Missal in that parish solely, and that the Saint Paul's Treasure Valley Latin Mass Society may continue its current practice. The original diocesan document behind that quotation was not recovered for this draft, so the determination cannot be credited as a verified governing act: the Fraternity parish's own site, fetched in October 2026, states that it operates with the approval of the Bishop of Boise and that all its Masses and sacraments are celebrated according to the liturgical books of 1962, and the Nampa Mass is still listed as a second-Sunday Extraordinary Form celebration. Continuation with approval, but no verified TC-era act of his own, is no_record under the project rules, stated plainly.
The limits are real and they are his. Christensen has never been a permissive bishop on liturgy in general: his standing instruction requires priests to face the people at every Ordinary Form Mass and discourages kneelers and rails, and the board row records that ad-hoc diocesan Masses were curtailed even as the two established sites continued. Judged by what this man did with the old Mass itself in the TC era, however, the record is no_record: the two sites that existed before Traditionis Custodes are the two sites that exist in 2026, both with his approval, but no TC-era authorization, decree, or determination of his has been verified. If the tracker-quoted determination's original document surfaces, the verdict revisits to preserved.