Robert Joseph Fisher
Robert Joseph Fisher was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 24, 1959, the oldest of the four children of Robert and Trudy (Torzewski) Fisher. He attended Epiphany and St. Bede elementary schools in Detroit and graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School in 1977. At the University of Detroit he earned a Bachelor of Science in management science, and during and after college he worked for the Catholic Youth Organization, running its camping services near Port Sanilac, Michigan.
While working for the CYO he discerned a call to the priesthood and entered Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit in the fall of 1986, earning a Master of Divinity. Cardinal Adam Maida ordained him a priest on June 27, 1992. He served as associate pastor of Our Lady Star of the Sea in Grosse Pointe Woods, then as the archdiocese's director of priestly vocations from 1995 to 2000, then as pastor of St. Angela in Roseville and St. Lawrence in Utica, and from March 2014 as rector of the National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica in Royal Oak.
Pope Francis named him an auxiliary bishop of Detroit on November 23, 2016, and he was consecrated on January 25, 2017, with the titular see of Forum Popilii and the motto 'Per caritatem servite invicem' - out of love, place yourselves at one another's service. He now serves as episcopal vicar and regional moderator for the archdiocese's Northeast Region. His public profile is that of a pastor and administrator rather than a published theologian, and on the old Mass he has no record of his own: the liturgical decisions of his archdiocese belong to its archbishops.
On the Traditional Latin Mass, Bishop Fisher has no record of his own, and the honest panel says so. Search as one will, there is no decree in his name, no homily defending or opposing the old rite, no public word for or against it. He is an auxiliary bishop and a regional vicar, and the liturgical decisions of the Archdiocese of Detroit belong to its archbishops, not to him.
Those decisions have been consequential. Under Archbishop Vigneron the archdiocese kept the old Mass going at St. Joseph Shrine under the Institute of Christ the King and by special permission elsewhere; under Archbishop Weisenburger the parish-church permissions lapsed on July 1, 2025, and the Mass was gathered into four designated non-parish sites. Fisher served through both settlements as a pastor and administrator, but neither bears his signature, and to credit or blame him for either would be to invent a record he does not have.
That is why the verdict here is narrow and exact: no record. Fisher's ministry in Detroit has been parish ministry, vocations work, and regional governance, not liturgical policymaking. A faithful auxiliary of two restriction-era archbishops, with no liturgical heart yet shown of his own, for good or for ill.