Robert J. Brennan
Robert John Brennan was born on June 7, 1962, in the Bronx, New York, to Robert and Patricia Brennan, the oldest of five children, and was raised in Lindenhurst, on Long Island. He attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Lindenhurst and St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School in West Islip, then St. John's University in Queens, where he earned a bachelor of science in mathematics and computer science. He studied at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York, earning a master of divinity, and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on May 27, 1989, by Bishop John R. McGann.
In Rockville Centre he served first at St. Patrick in Smithtown, became secretary to the bishop in 1994, serving three bishops, and vicar general and moderator of the curia in 2002. In 2010 he became pastor of St. Mary of the Isle in Long Beach. He was ordained an auxiliary bishop of Rockville Centre on July 25, 2012. Pope Francis appointed him the twelfth Bishop of Columbus, Ohio, on January 31, 2019, and he was installed there on March 29, 2019, where in December 2020 he launched Real Presence, Real Future, a diocese-wide planning initiative across 23 counties.
On September 29, 2021, Pope Francis named him the eighth Bishop of Brooklyn, succeeding Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, and he was installed at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Brooklyn on November 30, 2021, returning to New York from Ohio. He still holds the see in October 2026, shepherding Brooklyn and Queens, a diocese he has called the Diocese of Immigrants, motto Thy will be done.
- 2021-11-30Brennan installed as eighth Bishop of Brooklyn, succeeding Nicholas DiMarzio, whose retirement became effective September 29, 2021. The 2021 continuation of the old Mass at St. Josaphat in Queens, Our Lady of Peace in Brooklyn, and two monasteries, recorded by the advocacy tracker without a named bishop, belongs to the DiMarzio framework Brennan inherited, not to an act of Brennan's own, and is treated here as inherited context only. ↗
- 2025-09-28At the end of September 2025, attendees at St. Cecilia Church in Brooklyn were informed that the Traditional Latin Mass there would no longer be offered after October 12, 2025, under Brennan's site model, with provision continuing at Our Lady Queen of Peace in Brooklyn and St. Josaphat in Queens. (Cited to the Wayback capture: the original CNA URL was retired when CNA moved to EWTN News and now redirects to a home page.) ↗
- 2025-10-08Catholic News Agency reported Brennan's site model in full: the official Brooklyn site would be Our Lady Queen of Peace, celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass for more than 25 years, and the official Queens site would be St. Josaphat, celebrating it for years and now to be run by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, which would establish an oratory at St. Josaphat Parish. Diocesan spokesman John Quaglione said Brennan very much wants to meet the needs of the people and had developed a more sustainable approach, citing a clergy shortage exacerbated by recent priest deaths, with St. Cecilia averaging 25 to 35 people served by a rotation that could no longer continue. (Cited to the Wayback capture: the original CNA URL was retired when CNA moved to EWTN News and now redirects to a home page.) ↗
- 2021-07-16Traditionis Custodes issued while Brennan was Bishop of Columbus, a see he had held since March 29, 2019. His TC-era Columbus tenure runs only from the motu proprio to his Brooklyn installation, about four and a half months. ↗
- 2021-07-30The Catholic News Agency and National Catholic Register tracker of diocesan responses recorded the Diocese of Columbus as N/A in the first weeks after the motu proprio, and no statement, decree, dispensation, or site designation by Brennan for Columbus in the July to November 2021 window was found in the sources consulted. ↗
Brooklyn's board row says preserved, and the note behind it describes a framework that was not Bishop Brennan's. The locations it names, St. Josaphat in Queens, Our Lady of Peace in Brooklyn, and two monasteries, continuing to host the 1962 Missal on Sundays and holy days, are the continuation recorded for the diocese in 2021, when the bishop was Nicholas DiMarzio. Brennan was not installed in Brooklyn until November 30, 2021, more than four months after Traditionis Custodes, and the July 2021 tracker recorded Brooklyn simply as N/A. Whatever preserved the old Mass in Brooklyn in 2021, it was his predecessor's framework that Brennan inherited, and a dossier that credits Brennan with it would be misattributing another man's act.
Brennan's own governing act came four years later, and it cut a site. At the end of September 2025, attendees at St. Cecilia Church in Brooklyn were told the Traditional Latin Mass there would end after October 12, and Catholic News Agency reported on October 8 that Brennan had adopted a site model: one official site in each borough, Our Lady Queen of Peace in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, which had celebrated the Mass for more than 25 years, and St. Josaphat in Bayside, Queens, which had celebrated it for years and would now be run by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, establishing an oratory there. The diocesan spokesman, John Quaglione, said Brennan very much wants to meet the needs of the people and had developed a more sustainable approach, citing a clergy shortage worsened by recent priest deaths, a rotation at St. Cecilia averaging only 25 to 35 people that could no longer continue, and priests already ministering to two or three parishes each. Cutting St. Cecilia, the spokesman said, would better the diocese's ability to provide the Mass and give assurance of its continuation.
That assurance is real, and it is why this is a reduction rather than a suppression. Two official sites remain, one of them now entrusted to a traditional society rather than left to a rotation, with congregations of about 65 at Our Lady Queen of Peace and about 240 at St. Josaphat. But a bishop who reduces three parish churches to two has reduced provision, whatever his motive, and motive here was stated as sustainability, not hostility to the rite. The monastery Masses named in the inherited framework were not addressed in the 2025 reporting consulted, so their later status is an open debt, and the counts here count parish churches only. On Brennan's own record, Brooklyn is reduced, and the board row's preserved, which describes his predecessor's continuation, does not survive his 2025 act.