Cordileone won’t go to march in D. C.
San Francisco’s Roman Catholic archbishop has decided not to attend this year’s annual march against same- sex marriage in Washington, D. C., avoiding a repeat of an appearance that proved controversial back home last year.
Other U. S. bishops will instead represent the Catholic Church at Saturday’s rally, the San Francisco Archdiocese said in a brief statement issued Wednesday evening explaining why Cordileone would not be going.
In an earlier statement to The Chronicle confirming his nonattendance, the archdiocese said Cordileone’s “highest priority” was his intention to speak with teachers and families in local Catholic schools, where there has been an outcry over the archbishop’s demand that staffers sign a morality clause declaring sex outside marriage and homosexual relations to be “gravely evil.”
“I suspect just because things have heated up so much that he has changed his mind,” said Brian Cahill, a former director of Catholic Charities, who was among about 100 local parishioners signing an ad in The Chronicle last week calling on Pope Francis to replace Cordileone. “Everywhere I go — even at a Catholic Charities fundraiser the other day — I run into people who say, ‘ How can I sign something like the ad in The Chronicle?’ ”
Cordileone was a star speaker at
last year’s anti- same- sex marriage march, which was held in June in Washington, D. C., and drew several thousand people. He knelt on the sidewalk across from the U. S. Supreme Court and led the crowd in prayer against samesex marriage.
His participation drew condemnation from a number of local officials, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Mayor Ed Lee and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Cordileone chairs the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Subcommittee on the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, and co- signed a March 26 letter to other bishops urging them to attend the Washington rally this year.
His chairmanship of the subcommittee means “I’m the one to call on when there’s a marriage event,” Cordileone told The Chronicle’s editorial board in February.
This year’s March for Marriage will be held three days before the U. S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the constitutionality of state laws defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. In 2008, when he was bishop in San Diego, Cordileone helped raise $ 1.5 million to support Proposition 8, the California initiative that would have included that definition of marriage in the state’s Constitution.
Voters approved the constitutional amendment, but federal courts blocked it from taking effect.
“While he remains involved in national issues, Archbishop Cordileone will not be attending the march,” the archdiocese said in its statement Wednesday. “His highest priority in the coming days is a productive dialogue with Catholic- school teachers and families here in San Francisco, whose concerns are very important to him.”
A leader in the archdiocese teachers movement to oppose the proposed morality code said he had heard nothing of a renewed dialogue with the archbishop.
“We have nothing to our knowledge planned,” said Sal Curcio, a teacher at Sacred Heart Catholic High School. “I double- checked my e- mail. Nothing there. I’ve asked a few people, and so far nobody has heard of any meeting planned.”
The archbishop’s supporters said they did not think he was caving in to anything by deciding not to attend the Washington march.
“Do you honestly think the archbishop is backing down with everything going on?” said Eva Muntean, a parishioner who co- founded SF Catholics. org this month to support Cordileone. “It’s incredible the things they are doing to the archbishop, but he is staying strong.
“He is a wonderful man, humble, shy, super- intelligent,” Muntean said. “And above all he loves the church. He loves his flock. With all the confirmations and Communions and other duties he has, he’s pretty busy, so I’m not surprised that he would not go to the march.”