Richard Francis Reidy
Richard Francis Reidy was born on May 30, 1958, in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Robert and Barbara Reidy, and his first profession was the law: a bachelor's degree in political science from the College of the Holy Cross in 1980, a juris doctor from Boston College Law School in 1983, and seven years practising at Mirick, O'Connell, DeMallie and Lougee in Worcester. The priesthood came second and deliberately. He studied at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore and at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, taking a doctorate in sacred theology from the Gregorian University in 1993 and a master's in spirituality from the Angelicum, and Bishop Timothy Harrington ordained him a priest on June 25, 1994.
Worcester gave him its cathedral at thirty-seven: rector of St. Paul Cathedral from 1995 for thirteen years, diocesan chaplain to the Boy Scouts, later pastor of St. Ann in North Oxford and defender of the bond, with a licentiate in canon law from the Catholic University of America in 2010. From July 6, 2013, he was Worcester's vicar general and moderator of the curia, and in 2023 he was named a Chaplain to His Holiness. On February 12, 2025, Pope Francis named him the sixth Bishop of Norwich, and he was ordained and installed on April 29, 2025, inheriting a diocese in the last weeks of its bankruptcy.
Reidy has been Bishop of Norwich only since April 29, 2025, and his first year has been consumed by the close of the diocese's Chapter 11 bankruptcy, from which Norwich emerged in May 2025. In that time he has made no act on the old Mass: no decree, no permission, no restriction has been found, and no church offering the 1962 Missal within the diocese's territory was identified in the sources consulted for this batch. His predecessor Cote left the question untouched and his administrator, Archbishop Coyne, left it untouched.
On the old Mass, his record so far is the record he inherited - which is to say, an empty page, in a diocese where the question appears never to have been posed. That is recorded here as no record, without praise or blame.