Mark Pivarunas

Mark Anthony Pivarunas, CMRI (born October 31, 1958) is a U.S. based sedevacantist and Traditionalist Catholic bishop and Superior General of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen. He is a proponent of sedevacantism, a position that holds the papacy is currently vacant; thus he is not in communion with the Holy See nor is he recognised as a bishop by the Roman Catholic Church. He can therefore be classed as a member of the Independent Catholic movement.
Pivarunas was born to his father, Walter Pivarunas and an ethnic Italian mother in Chicago, Illinois. He has three brothers and a sister. He entered the religious life in September 1974, entering the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen taking the religious name Brother Mary Tarcisius. He made his final profession on September 12, 1980, at CMRI's headquarters at Mount Saint Michael in Spokane, Washington. In May 1984, Pivarunas was among the clergy who removed Bishop Francis Schuckardt, founder of the CMRI, under controversial circumstances. On April 23, 1985, after some time without a clear leader, Pivarunas and the clergy met with Bishop George Musey (an independent, Thuc line bishop), who agreed to advance Pivarunas and two others to the priesthood on June 27, 1985. Bishop Musey's connections with Mount Saint Michael were limited after that.
The priests concluded that, while it was important to dispense the Mass and sacraments, the condition of sedevacantism (Sede vacante, the empty papal see) in the Roman Catholic Church resulted in a vacuum of canonical ecclesiastical authority. A coalition of the priests elected the 30-year-old Pivarunas to the post of Superior General of the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen in August 1989.
In 1991, the CMRI clergy made contact with another sedevacantist bishop, the Mexican Moises Carmona, who offered to elevate Pivarunas to the episcopate, without the normally required papal mandate. On September 24, 1991, Father Pivarunas was consecrated a bishop by Carmona at Mount Saint Michael.
On November 30, 1993, Bishop Pivarunas conferred episcopal consecration to Father Daniel Dolan in Cincinnati, Ohio, and on May 11, 1999, he also consecrated Martin Davila for the Union Catolica Treno to succeed Moises Carmona.
Bishop Pivarunas now resides in Omaha, Nebraska serving as Superior General of CMRI and as rector of the congregation's Mater Dei Seminary there.
==External links==
*Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen
Category:Living people
Category:Traditionalist Catholic bishops
Category:Sedevacantists
Category:American bishops