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Donald Walter Trautman

Catholic bishop (1936–2022)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ279390 ↗
Source-derived summary

Donald Walter Trautman (June 24, 1936 – February 26, 2022) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as bishop of the Diocese of Erie in Western Pennsylvania from 1990 to 2011. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo in New York from 1985 to 1990.

Biography

Early life

Donald Trautman was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended Niagara University in Lewiston, New York. He studied theology under Karl Rahner at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, where he obtained his Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1962.

Priesthood

Trautman was ordained to the priesthood in Innsbruck on April 7, 1962, for the Diocese of Buffalo. On his return to New York, he was assigned as a parish administrator in Collins, New York, then associate pastor at a parish in Buffalo.

Trautman studied biblical language for one year at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., continuing his post-graduate work in Rome at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, earning his Licentiate in Scripture in 1965. During his studies in Rome, Trautman served as a peritus, or theological expert, at the Second Vatican Council. In 1966, he earned his Doctor of Sacred Theology degree from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum).

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Donald Walter Trautman” as catholic bishop (1936–2022). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Donald, Walter and Trautman.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1936, 2022, 1990, 2011—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1936-06-24. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Donald, Walter and Trautman providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Donald Walter Trautman”, the useful work is to connect “catholic bishop (1936–2022)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q279390. VIAF identifies the subject as 89531259. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2022, 1990 and 2011.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Donald Walter Trautman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.