Controversial Priest Ordered to Quit His House after Losing Legal Battle

Herald Scotland
May 16, 2015

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/controversial-priest-ordered-to-quit-his-house-after-losing-legal-battle.126184736


Supporters of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone are holding a “family picnic” Saturday at Sue Bierman Park. To which much of the city replies: Hey guys, why don’t you give it a rest?

As Cordileone’s most eloquent critic, Brian Cahill, the former head of San Francisco Catholic Charities, says, when Cordileone arrived here 2 1/2 years ago, he had “barely unpacked his bags” before he began launching volleys from the ultraconservative faction of the culture wars.

He ignored protests from prominent local politicians such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and attended the divisive March for Marriage in Washington, D.C., in 2014. More recently, he announced changes to the teacher handbook for archdiocese schools that required teachers to “affirm and believe” that “adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations are gravely evil.”

And his hand-picked pastor for Star of the Sea parish, the Rev. Joseph Illo, courted controversy by announcing that girls would no longer be allowed to serve as altar servers, and followed that up with some blog posts that said if parishioners left because of his policies, it was “a necessary purging.”

And how has that worked out? Well, when this year’s March for Marriage rolled around, it turned out Cordileone had other pressing matters to attend to and took a pass. The teacher handbook hasn’t been changed, and now the San Francisco Archdiocesan Federation of Teachers (with connections to the AFL-CIO) is involved, so this has turned into a labor relations matter, which — just a piece of advice — may get messy.

As Paul Hance, a teacher at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo and American Federation of Teachers Local 2240 union representative says, “We will not surrender our employment rights that are protected by state and federal law.”