With encouragement from his parents, family, grade school principal and pastor, Bishop Vigneron entered the high school program of Sacred Heart Seminary, Detroit, in September 1962.  After completing the 12^th grade, he continued there for college.  In June 1970, Bishop Vigneron graduated with his AB degree with majors in both Philosophy and Classical Languages.

After Sacred Heart, he was sent to Rome to continue his theological education at the Pontifical Gregorian University while living at the North American College, a house of formation for seminarians from the United States.  He earned an STB (Bachelor of Sacred Theology) degree in 1973, and in 1974 returned home to serve his transitional deacon internship at St. Clement of Rome Parish, Romeo, in the Detroit Archdiocese.

Bishop Vigneron was ordained to the priesthood in the Detroit Presbyterate on July 26, 1975 at St. Clement of Rome Church, by the late Cardinal John Dearden.  His first assignment as a priest was as associate pastor of Our Lady Queen of Peace Church, Harper Woods (a Detroit suburb).  He returned to Rome in 1976, for a year of study to complete the work required for his STL (Licentiate in Sacred Theology) degree, which he earned from the Gregorian University in 1977.  Later that year he returned to Michigan to resume his duties as associate pastor of Our Lady Queen of Peace.

Cardinal Dearden assigned Bishop Vigneron to begin graduate studies in the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1979.  He earned his MA in Philosophy in 1983 and his Ph.D. in that field in May 1987, with a dissertation on the German Philosopher, Edmund Husserl, the Father of Phenomenology.  In January 1985, before completing his dissertation, Bishop Vigneron returned to Detroit to teach philosophy and theology at Sacred Heart College Seminary.  In January 1988 he was appointed dean of that school and became a key member of the team working to realize Cardinal Edmund Szoka’s vision for the transformation of that institution into a “major seminary” offering graduate theological education.

In the fall of 1991 Bishop Vigneron returned to Rome to serve as an official of the Administrative Section of the Vatican Secretariat of State.  While there he was an adjunct instructor at the Gregorian University.  In spring of 1994, Bishop Vigneron returned to Detroit to become the second Rector/President of the re-founded Sacred Heart Major Seminary.

On June 12, 1996 Bishop Vigneron was named Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Detroit, and received Episcopal ordination from Cardinal Adam Maida, the Archbishop of Detroit, on July 9 of that year.  In addition to continuing to fill the office of seminary rector, Bishop Vigneron was given responsibility for the pastoral support of one of the regions into which the Detroit Archdiocese is subdivided.  On 10 January 2003 he was named Coadjutor Bishop of Oakland and succeeded to the See of Oakland on 1 October 2003. 

In the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Vigneron has served on the Committee for the American College in Louvain, the Committee on the Liturgy and the ad hoc Committee on the Plenary Council Varium.  He is currently a member of the Doctrine Committee and the Catechism Committee.