Robert Gerald Casey
Robert G. Casey was born and raised in Chicago, the son of Irish immigrants. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Loyola University Chicago (1989) and a Master of Divinity from Mundelein Seminary (1994). He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago on May 21, 1994, by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. He is fluent in Spanish and spent much of his priesthood in Hispanic ministry.
Casey served in Chicago parish and administrative roles and was ordained a bishop in 2018 by Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, serving as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago. His formation and career place him squarely in the Bernardin-Cupich lineage of the Chicago presbyterate.
On February 12, 2025, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr and named Casey the 10th Archbishop of Cincinnati. Casey was installed on April 3, 2025, at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains. He inherits, rather than authored, Cincinnati's existing liturgical framework: Schnurr's 2021 Traditionis Custodes norms and Schnurr's 2022-2023 ad orientem decree.
Archbishop Casey has, to date, taken no publicly recorded action for or against the Traditional Latin Mass in Cincinnati. Every restriction currently in force is his predecessor Dennis Schnurr's work: the July 2021 Traditionis Custodes norms that corral the 1962 Mass into three designated non-parochial sites (Old St. Mary's, Sacred Heart, Holy Family Dayton) while forcing all other traditional Masses to be unscheduled, unpublicized, and permission-only; and the December 2022 / January 2023 ad orientem decree that mandates at least one versus populum Mass every Sunday and holy day in every church and bars scheduled ad orientem celebration without chancery approval. Casey did not create these; he inherited them intact.
Two things about the inherited landscape matter for traditional Catholics. First, the framework is comparatively survivable: unlike dioceses that suppressed the TLM entirely, Cincinnati retains a daily FSSP apostolate at Holy Family Dayton and two Oratory-staffed traditional sites in the city, so the sacraments remain accessible. Second, the ad orientem decree is a distinctly aggressive 'beyond the TLM' measure -- it reaches into the reformed rite to discourage even eastward-facing celebration, a posture widely criticized as resting on a disputed translation of the liturgical instruction. Whether Casey defends, softens, or quietly retires it will be the clearest early tell of his disposition.
Casey's background counsels sober watchfulness rather than optimism: ordained by Cardinal Bernardin, made a bishop by Cardinal Cupich, formed entirely in the Chicago presbyterate and centered on Hispanic ministry -- a profile not historically associated with sympathy for the old rite. But profile is not policy, and he has made no anti-traditional move. The honest verdict is too early to judge: a man who has not yet acted on this question, standing atop a restrictive structure he did not build, with a formation that gives traditional Catholics reason to watch closely rather than to relax.