William Michael Joensen
William Michael Joensen was born on July 8, 1960, in Waterloo, Iowa, the eldest of five children, and grew up in Ames, where his family was rooted in the land and in parish life. He studied zoology at Iowa State University and had begun medical school at the University of Iowa when he discerned a call to the priesthood instead. He entered the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Dubuque on June 24, 1989.
After six years in parish ministry, Joensen turned to graduate study in philosophy, earning a doctorate from The Catholic University of America in 2001. He returned to Iowa as a professor of philosophy at Loras College in Dubuque, where he also served as dean of campus spiritual life and as a spiritual director at St. Pius X Seminary. He contributed spiritual reflections to Magnificat and taught in the Tertio Millennio Seminar in Krakow.
Pope Francis appointed Joensen the tenth Bishop of Des Moines on July 18, 2019, and he was ordained a bishop and installed on September 27, 2019, succeeding Richard Pates. As bishop he has presented himself as a native son of Iowa who loves the state and its people; his motto is Exquirite faciem suam, seek His face. His episcopate has been marked by ordinary diocesan governance rather than by national controversy, and his handling of the older liturgy, decided within months of Traditionis Custodes, is the clearest public test of that pastoral style.
- 2021-09-21Letter to Msgr. Frank Chiodo and Fr. Guthrie Dolan allowing St. Anthony Catholic Church, Des Moines, to continue its weekly Sunday Mass using the 1962 Missale Romanum, in accord with Traditionis Custodes. ↗
- 2021-10-10Joensen document read at the weekly Mass at St. Anthony's, reported by Una Voce Des Moines as the diocesan response to Traditionis Custodes. ↗
- 2021-11-02Diocese publicly reports the decision: St. Anthony's 1962 Mass on Sundays at 5 p.m., also on holy days and feast days but not during the Easter Triduum. ↗
<p>When Traditionis Custodes reached Des Moines, Bishop Joensen did not leave the question to drift. In a letter dated September 21, 2021, to the pastor of St. Anthony Catholic Church in Des Moines, Msgr. Frank Chiodo, and to Fr. Guthrie Dolan, he allowed the parish to continue its weekly Sunday Mass according to the 1962 Missale Romanum, a decision the diocese publicly reported on November 2, 2021, as in accord with the motu proprio.</p>
<p>The authorization was a governing act, not a gesture of goodwill. Joensen grounded it in his own judgment that there had been no conspicuous liturgical discord or division in the diocese, and he set its terms: Sundays at 5 p.m., with holy days and other feast days permitted but not the Easter Triduum. The Mass continued at the same single site where it had been offered before the motu proprio, so the diocese neither gained nor lost a site under him.</p>
<p>Nothing in the record shows Joensen expanding provision beyond St. Anthony, founding a new community, or seeking a Roman dispensation, and this dossier does not claim any of those things. What it shows is a bishop who, at the first moment the new law required his decision, used his authority to keep the existing Mass in place, and that is preservation in the strict sense of this project.</p>