Bishop Salvatore Cordileone

More about Bishop Salvatore Cordileone

On July 5, 2002, Cordileone was appointed as auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of San Diego and titular bishop of Natchesium by Pope John Paul II. He received his episcopal consecration on August 21, 2002, from Bishop Brom, with Bishops Raymond Burke and Gilbert Espinosa Chávez serving as co-consecrators.

Cordileone serves on the episcopal advisory board of the Institute for Religious Life at University of Saint Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois and St. Gianna Physician's Guild in San Diero Cordileone is considered to be theologically conservative. At the 2006 meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Baltimore, in the course of consideration of the document which issued as "Happy Are Those Who Are Called to His Supper" he proposed to the gathered bishops that the use of contraception should be included in a list of thoughts or actions constituting grave matter. The proposal was defeated, although a separate document approved at the meeting mentioned that the Catholic Church says that "contraception is objectively immoral."

Within the USCCB, Cordileone sat on the Bishops' and Presidents' Committee on Catholic Education from 2006 to 2009.

Cordileone was later named the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Oakland by Pope Benedict XVI on March 23, 2009. Filling the vacancy left by Bishop Allen Vigneron's promotion to Archbishop of Detroit in January, Cordileone's relatively quick appointment was speculated to have been related to accusations that the diocese's interim administrator had blessed same-sex unions. Cordileone's installation occurred on May 5, 2009, at the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland.

On September 20, 2009, Cordileone offered a Pontifical High Mass (in Latin, Missa Pontificalis) at Saint Margaret Mary Church in Oakland. This was the first time a Tridentine Pontifical High Mass was offered in Northern California after the liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council were finalized in 1969.

From 2011 to 2017, Cordileone served as chair of the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage (later renamed a subcommittee). working against the legalization of same-sex marriage. His mission was described by the USCCB as preserving the definition of marriage as the union between one man and one woman. In a June 2012 EWTN News interview, Cordileone stated that a redefinition of marriage to include LGBT couples would be bad for children, detrimental to society and dangerous for religious freedom.

On July 27, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI named Cordileone as archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The appointment of Cordileone, and the acceptance of the resignation of his predecessor, Archbishop George Niederauer, were both announced on July 27 in Washington, D.C., by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, papal and apostolic nuncio to the United States. Cordileone was installed on October 4, 2012, at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco.