Oscar Hugh Lipscomb

Lipscomb was born on September 21, 1931, to Oscar H. Lipscomb Sr. and Margaret Antoinette (née Saunders) Lipscomb.[2] He graduated from McGill–Toolen Catholic High School in 1951, then known as McGill Institute,[3] where there is an athletic complex named in his honor.[2][4] 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.[2] 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.[3]

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.[5] 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.[6]

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.[7] Trosch sparked the controversy by his anti-abortion statements advocating the theory of justifiable homicide in the case of killing abortion providers, and his attempt to place an advertisement in the Mobile Press-Register newspaper with his original cartoon showing a man pointing a gun at a doctor who was holding a knife over a pregnant woman.[8] 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."[8] 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".[7] 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.[9]

For many years, Lipscomb was a member of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.[10] His resignation was accepted by the Pope in 2008. Nonetheless, he stayed engaged with the life of the Catholic community in the archdiocese.[2]

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.[11][12]

• Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile