CALIFORNIA
Huffington Post

By Carol Kuruvilla & Antonia Blumberg

A group of Catholics in San Francisco is asking the pope to replace their archdiocese’s spiritual leader, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, with someone “true to our values.”

More than 100 Catholics signed a full-page ad in Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle asking Pope Francis to name a new church leader more closely aligned with San Francisco’s progressive ideals. In their open letter, the petitioners argue that Cordileone has “fostered an atmosphere of division and intolerance” and “isolated himself from our community.”

The letter follows months of protests against the archdiocese’s leadership. Frustrated local Catholics have spoken out, in particular, against Cordileone’s efforts to add language to the moral guidelines laid out for teachers at Catholic high schools that reaffirms the church’s stances on same-sex marriage, artificial insemination and other controversial matters. …

James Martin, a Jesuit priest and editor at large of…