Oscar Hugh Lipscomb

Oscar Hugh Lipscomb (b. September 21, 1931, Mobile, Alabama) is the retired Roman Catholic Archbishop of Mobile, Alabama. Lipscomb's retirement was accepted by the Holy See April 2, 2008.

He was the first Archbishop of Mobile and its eighth bishop. He was ordained to the priesthood for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mobile-Birmingham on July 15, 1956, at the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli in Rome. He was appointed Archbishop of Mobile on July 29, 1980,and consecrated on November 16, 1980, by his predecessor, Archbishop John Lawrence May. The Diocese of Mobile was elevated to the Archdiocese of Mobile on the date Lipscomb was appointed its first archbishop.

He attended McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in Mobile, then known as McGill Institute, where today an athletic complex is named in his honor. After graduating from McGill in 1949, he entered St. Bernard Junior Seminary and College, in Cullman, Alabama. In 1951, he entered the Pontifical North American College Seminary in Rome, and was there until his ordination in 1956. He acquired an M.A.degree in History, in 1960, and a Ph.D. degree in History from Catholic University of America (CUA), in 1963.

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.

Archbishop Lipscomb came into the national spotlight in the United States in the early 1990's due to the controversy involving Rev. David C. Trosch, a priest of the Archdiocese serving in Magnolia Springs, a community in south Baldwin County, southeast of Mobile. Rev. 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. 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." Rev. Trosch maintained a website under the name of a non-profit organization called "Life Enterprises Unlimited" based in Mobile, Alabama 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.