Salvatore Cordileone will soon be installed as archbishop in San Francisco. - PHOTO: www.sfarchdiocese.org
LGBT civil rights activists plan to protest on Oct. 4 in San Francisco when the Catholic Church installs Salvatore Cordileone as the new archbishop.
Cordileone, at the ceremony, officially becomes the head of the San Francisco Archdiocese.
A call to demonstrate issued by GetEQUAL said, “This is a slap in the face to the San Francisco LGBT population, but more importantly an affront to all equality-minded Catholics in the Bay Area.”
Cordileone, as a bishop in Oakland, was one of the more influential voices in the campaign to pass Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that amended the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
The demonstration will take place outside St. Mary’s Cathedral on Gough Street in San Francisco at 1 p.m.
He also leads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee for the Defense of Marriage, which exists to block marriage equality. He has, in past campaigns, been aligned with the anti-gay Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage.
"Despite a vast majority of American Catholics affirming the true social justice teachings of Jesus and of the church, Cordileone continues to use right-wing political action to climb the ranks of church hierarchy," said San Francisco GetEqual activist Billy Bradford.
At a recent San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting, elected officials also were critical of Cordileone's promotion and assignment.
"It’s disappointing that the church has assigned a person here who has shown a great deal of hostility to the (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) community," Supervisor Christina Olague, a bisexual who was raised as a Catholic, said at the board meeting, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
