William Draper Byrne
William Draper Byrne was born on September 26, 1964, in Washington, D.C., the youngest of eight children of Mary (Largent) Byrne and Dr. William Byrne, a thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon. Educated at Georgetown Preparatory School and the College of the Holy Cross, he taught three years at Mater Dei School before seminary at the Pontifical North American College in Rome; he was ordained for the Archdiocese of Washington on June 25, 1994, at St. Matthew's Cathedral.
His Washington priesthood made him known well beyond his parishes: chaplain at the University of Maryland's Catholic Student Center (1999–2007), pastor of St. Peter's in Washington (2007–2015) and of Our Lady of Mercy in Potomac (2015–2020), and a Missionary of Mercy in 2016. His “Five Things” videos — short reflections on prayer and daily life — grew into the book Five Things with Fr. Bill in October 2020.
Pope Francis named him the tenth Bishop of Springfield in Massachusetts on October 14, 2020, and he was ordained and installed on December 14, 2020, taking the motto “In living hope through the resurrection.” His episcopate opened with a pledge of transparency on clergy abuse; in 2023 his brother bishops elected him to chair the USCCB Committee on Communications.
- 2021-05-01Pre-Traditionis Custodes context, recorded as dated context and not as a TC act: Byrne appointed Father Ryan Sliwa administrator of Our Lady of the Valley, Easthampton, effective 1 May 2021 (diocesan assignments, The Catholic Mirror, April 2021). Sliwa was the priest who had been celebrating the traditional Mass at Agawam; the old Mass moved with its celebrant to Easthampton two months before the motu proprio. ↗
- 2021-07No decree and no public statement followed Traditionis Custodes. CNA's national survey of diocesan responses (as of 30 July 2021) recorded the Diocese of Springfield in Massachusetts as N/A, and no implementing decree of Byrne's has been published. The diocese's single Sunday Traditional Latin Mass at Our Lady of the Valley, Easthampton, continued in its parish church without interruption. ↗
- 2022-10-09Parish bulletins document the Easthampton Mass in place through the TC era: the bulletins of 9 and 30 October 2022 list Sunday 12:30 p.m. (TLM) with Father Ryan Sliwa as administrator; the same listing, with Sliwa as pastor, appears in the bulletins of 12 May 2024 and 1 June 2025. The Mass survived the Holy See's rescript of 21 February 2023, which reserved dispensations for parish churches to the Dicastery, without relocation or reduction. ↗
- 2025-03-01A diocesan Jubilee pilgrimage Solemn High Traditional Latin Mass was celebrated at the Basilica of St. Stanislaus, Chicopee, by Canon Pierre Dumain of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, rector of St. Paul's Oratory in Warren (Diocese of Worcester), with the Traditional Latin Mass communities of western Massachusetts and Connecticut invited. A one-off pilgrimage Mass, not a regular Chicopee site; the Institute has no house in this diocese. ↗
- 2025-10The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported Father Sliwa as the only priest in the Diocese of Springfield offering the Latin Mass, at Our Lady of the Valley, Easthampton, drawing some 90 people every week and as many as 130, an increase from the 75 or 80 who attended when he celebrated the traditional Mass at Agawam more than five years earlier. ↗
Springfield's whole record on the old Mass can be told in one line: one priest, one parish, one Sunday Mass — and it is still there. The community's celebrant, Father Ryan Sliwa, had offered the Traditional Latin Mass at St. John the Evangelist in Agawam since 2019. In the spring of 2021 Bishop Byrne appointed him administrator of Our Lady of the Valley in Easthampton, and the Mass followed its priest. When Traditionis Custodes landed two months later, Byrne published nothing — no decree, no statement; Catholic News Agency's national survey recorded Springfield in Massachusetts as “N/A.” The Mass simply continued in its parish church, Sunday by Sunday, through the Holy See's 2023 rescript reserving parish churches to Rome, with Sliwa in time made pastor, on a date the record searched does not pin down (administrator in October 2022 bulletins, pastor by December 2023, no appointment notice found). In March 2025 the diocese hosted a Jubilee pilgrimage Solemn High Mass at the Basilica of St. Stanislaus in Chicopee, celebrated by a visiting canon of the Institute of Christ the King.
The limits must be stated as plainly as the credit. Byrne never spoke a public word in defense of the old Mass, never expanded it, and never gave the diocese a second site: a territory of four counties and more than 2,800 square miles still depends on a single priest, and the arrangement would likely not survive his transfer. What he gave the traditional faithful was not advocacy but room — and in the years when many dioceses were closing parish Latin Masses, room was the thing that mattered. The Easthampton congregation, by the local paper's count, grew under his tenure from some 75 or 80 souls at Agawam to 90, and at times 130, mostly young families.
Judged by acts, as he must be — he offered no words to judge — Byrne has no TC-era governing act on the old Mass to his name. The appointment that moved Sliwa to Easthampton came in May 2021, two months before Traditionis Custodes, and the later change of his title from administrator to pastor carries no dated appointment in the record searched, so it cannot be credited as a TC-era act. The Mass continued, undisturbed, in its church, on its Sunday; that continuation, with no governing act behind it, is no_record, stated plainly.