Thomas Wenski
Thomas Gerard Wenski was born October 18, 1950, in West Palm Beach, Florida, the son of a Polish immigrant father (Chester, who anglicized the surname from Wisniewski) and a Polish-American mother. He is a native Floridian who has kept close ties to the Polish-Catholic world. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Miami on May 15, 1976, by Archbishop Coleman Carroll, and did much of his early pastoral work among Haitian and Cuban immigrants in Miami, founding the Pierre Toussaint Haitian Catholic Center and becoming fluent in Creole and Spanish.
He was ordained a bishop on September 3, 1997, serving as Auxiliary Bishop of Miami (1997-2003), then Coadjutor Bishop of Orlando (2003-2004) and Bishop of Orlando (2004-2010). On April 20, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI named him Archbishop of Miami, and he was installed June 1, 2010. As of mid-2026 he remains the sitting Archbishop of Miami; although he submitted the customary resignation letter on reaching age 75 in October 2025, the Archdiocese confirmed he had not retired. He has never been Archbishop of Tampa; the Tampa Bay area falls under the Diocese of St. Petersburg, a suffragan of Miami.
Wenski is known publicly for two things that sit in tension in the wider culture: a forceful advocacy for immigrants and refugees (he has chaired the USCCB Committee on Migration), and an equally firm social conservatism on life, marriage, and religious liberty. He is a motorcycle enthusiast who founded an annual Archbishop's Motorcycle Ride benefiting an addiction-recovery ministry. His episcopal motto is 'All Things to All Men' (1 Corinthians 9:22).
On the central question -- what did Wenski DO about the traditional Latin Mass, especially after Traditionis Custodes (July 16, 2021) -- the deeds point clearly to friend, not foe. He did not suppress the older rite in Miami. He preserved it, gave it stable canonical structure, and entrusted its care to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter through the Holy Face of Jesus Latin Mass Chaplaincy based at Our Lady of Belen Chapel. Traditional Latin Masses continue at multiple sites across South Florida under his governance.
His openness long predates the current controversy: on February 2, 2012 he personally celebrated a Solemn Pontifical High Mass in the 1962 form at Epiphany Church -- reported as the first such pontifical celebration in Florida in over 40 years -- and the archdiocese already had several Extraordinary Form sites before 2021. That is a bishop comfortable in choir dress at the old altar, not one tolerating the rite grudgingly.
The strongest single deed is recent and unambiguous: on May 28, 2026 Wenski traveled to Omaha to personally ordain twelve priests for the FSSP, one of the Fraternity's largest classes, praising them in a homily rooted in St. Francis de Sales's warning against 'bitter zeal.' A diocesan archbishop who ordains an entire FSSP class and shelters a diocesan FSSP chaplaincy through the Traditionis Custodes era is, by his actions, a friend of the traditional Mass. The honest caveat: he is a conciliar-conservative churchman, not a partisan of the traditionalist cause, so 'friend' is the accurate label rather than 'ally' -- but on deeds, he is among the more TLM-favorable ordinaries in the United States.