UNITED STATES
Time
By Ellen Lee / San Francisco | August 29, 2012
Just days after his appointment as the next Archbishop of San Francisco in late July, the Rev. Salvitore Cordileone was in Napa Valley, leading a special mass for some of the nation’s most prominent conservative Catholic leaders.
They had gathered in the wine country to contemplate “Catholics in the Next America” and their place in the debate over abortion, marriage, sex and other hot button issues. Cordileone, 56, had already become known for his instrumental role in passing Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot to end same-sex marriage in California. And now Cordileone, the current bishop of the neighboring Oakland Diocese, had been called to head more than half a million Catholics in the San Francisco area.
“He was a rock star there. There was no question about it,” recalled Frank Schubert, one of the Napa retreat’s attendees and the political strategist who managed California’s Proposition 8 campaign.
But that ascension was shaken over the weekend after Cordileone, driving his mother home after a late evening with friends, was stopped at a sobriety checkpoint in San Diego and found to be over the state’s legal blood alcohol level of 0.08. He was booked and released after posting $2,500 bail.
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