Oscar Hugh Lipscomb facts for kids

Quick facts for kids His Excellency, The Most Reverend Oscar Hugh Lipscomb
Archbishop Emeritus of Mobile
Archdiocese	Mobile
Appointed	July 29, 1980
Enthroned	November 16, 1980
Reign ended	April 2, 2008
Predecessor	John Lawrence May
Successor	Thomas John Rodi
Orders
Ordination	July 15, 1956
Consecration	November 16, 1980 by John L. May, William Benedict Friend, and Raymond W. Lessard
Personal details
Born	(1931-09-21)September 21, 1931 Mobile, Alabama, U.S.
Died	July 15, 2020 (aged 88) Mobile, Alabama, U.S.
Previous post	Chancellor of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile

Styles of Oscar Hugh Lipscomb
Reference style	His Excellency The Most Reverend
Spoken style	Your Excellency
Religious style	Archbishop

Oscar Hugh Lipscomb (September 21, 1931 – July 15, 2020) was an American bishop of the Catholic Church. He served the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama, for 28 years. Lipscomb attended high school in Mobile, before studying for the priesthood in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1956 and served in the Archdiocese of Mobile as a parish priest and teacher. He became chancellor of the archdiocese in 1966, and was consecrated as a bishop fourteen years later. He retired as bishop in 2008. He was the first archbishop of Mobile and its eighth bishop.

Early life

Lipscomb was born on September 21, 1931, to Oscar H. Lipscomb Sr. and Margaret Antoinette (née Saunders) Lipscomb. He graduated from McGill–Toolen Catholic High School in 1949, then known as McGill Institute, where there is an athletic complex named in his honor. After graduating from McGill in 1949, he entered St. Bernard Junior Seminary and College in Cullman, Alabama. He attended seminary at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. On July 15, 1956, Lipscomb was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in Rome. He later acquired an M.A. degree in history, in 1960 and a Ph.D. degree in history from the Catholic University of America (CUA) in 1963.

Ministry

Lipscomb served as a parish priest in Mobile and as an educator at McGill Institute and Spring Hill College. He was appointed chancellor of the Mobile archdiocese in 1966 and served in that capacity until he was appointed Archbishop of Mobile in 1980. He was appointed Archbishop of Mobile on July 29, 1980, and consecrated on November 16, 1980, by his immediate predecessor, Archbishop John May. The Diocese of Mobile was elevated to the Archdiocese of Mobile on the date Lipscomb was appointed its first archbishop.

Lipscomb came into the national spotlight in the United States in the early 1990s due to the controversy involving the Reverend David Trosch, a priest of the archdiocese serving in Magnolia Springs, a community in south Baldwin County southeast of Mobile. ..... Lipscomb offered Trosch "the alternative of publicly abiding by the [Archbishop's] judgment on this erroneous teaching or relinquishing his public position in the church." Lipscomb removed Trosch from his pastoral assignments in August 1993 and suspended him from pastoral duties in a disciplinary action which was less strict than a censure, allowing Trosch to continue saying Mass but limiting him to having "no public persona in the Church". Trosch maintained a website under the name of a non-profit organization called "Life Enterprises Unlimited" based in Mobile until the time of his death, in which he criticized many people whom he characterized as "hell-bound sinners" including Archbishop Lipscomb.

For many years, Lipscomb was a member of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. His resignation was accepted by the Pope in 2008. Nonetheless, he stayed engaged with the life of the Catholic community in the archdiocese.

Lipscomb died on July 15, 2020, at a home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor in midtown Mobile. He was 88, and had suffered "a lengthy period of physical decline" in the years leading up to his death.

See also

Episcopal succession