OAKLAND (CA)
San Francisco Chronicle
Matthai Kuruvila
Pope Francis named a Boston priest with longtime ties to the Bay Area as the bishop of Oakland, where the future bishop emphasized that he would lead a path more pastoral than political.
Until now, Rev. Michael Barber had been the director of spiritual formation at a Boston seminary. In his first comments to diocesan staff in Oakland on Friday, Barber spoke of spending time in soup kitchens serving food, washing dishes, visiting jails and otherwise “getting my hands dirty.”
Barber, 58, is the first Jesuit bishop named by Francis, the first Jesuit pope. Oakland’s bishop-elect said it was Francis’ example he sought to follow, “to show, symbolically, that the church is there to serve the poor and the marginalized.”
The message is a notable contrast to that of his predecessor in Oakland, Salvatore Cordileone, the current San Francisco Archbishop. Cordileone has made the politics of marriage a central part of his leadership stretching back to his advocacy of Proposition 8, banned same-sex marriage in California.
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