Peter Leslie Smith
Peter Leslie Smith was born on February 8, 1958, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and was educated in the local schools. He earned a bachelor's degree and a law degree from the University of Natal, and in 1986 he immigrated to the United States. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Mount Angel Seminary in Saint Benedict, Oregon, and a Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree from the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome.
Ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon by Archbishop John Vlazny on June 9, 2001, at St. Mary's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, he served as parochial vicar of Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Lake Oswego from 2001 to 2004, then studied at the Catholic University of America, earning a licentiate in canon law in 2006. Returning to Portland, he was pastor of St. Rose of Lima Parish from 2006 to 2013, adjutant judicial vicar from 2010 to 2014, and vicar general and moderator of the curia from 2013, while also serving as liaison for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and as a member of the Brotherhood of the People of Praise.
Pope Francis named him titular bishop of Tubunae in Mauretania and auxiliary bishop of Portland in Oregon on March 4, 2014, and he was ordained a bishop on April 29, 2014, at St. Mary's Cathedral by Archbishop Alexander Sample, with Vlazny and Bishop Liam Cary as co-consecrators. He has served ever since as auxiliary to Archbishop Sample, and remains an auxiliary bishop of Portland in Oregon at the as-of date. This dossier concerns Portland in Oregon, not Portland in Maine.
Smith has served as an auxiliary bishop of Portland in Oregon since his ordination on April 29, 2014, under Archbishop Alexander Sample throughout the Traditionis Custodes era. The archdiocese's TC-era framework is Sample's, and it was a permissive one: on November 1, 2021, Sample decreed that the 1962 Missal remains authorized in the archdiocese, appointed a priest as Episcopal Vicar for the Usus Antiquior, and dispensed from the requirement that designated locations be non-parochial churches. Later surveys describe that implementation as resulting in no major changes. None of those acts was Smith's, and the distinction matters, because this dossier judges the auxiliary, not the archdiocese.
The check on Smith himself was unusually direct. Sample's November 1, 2021 implementation document was read in full for this draft: the Episcopal Vicar for the Usus Antiquior it appoints is Rev. John Boyle, not Smith, and Smith is not named anywhere in it. Searches of archdiocesan news and the general record for Smith in connection with the Traditional Latin Mass and Traditionis Custodes found no authorization, decree, dispensation request, appointment, or celebration of his own in the TC era. His documented work is curial and canonical: vicar general and moderator of the curia, judicial vicar, and liaison for the charismatic renewal.
The verdict is therefore no_record, and it is a verdict about his own record, not about Portland in Oregon's. It would change only if a primary archdiocesan document surfaces showing Smith himself authorizing, restricting, or sustaining a 1962-Missal celebration in the TC era. Serving as auxiliary under a permissive ordinary, and even holding the vicar-general's office while that ordinary's decrees stood, does not count as a governing act of his. No site count is assigned to this tenure, because no source carries a count attributable to an auxiliary's own act.