CALIFORNIA
SFGate
By Kevin Fagan
April 18, 2015
All those praying that Pope Francis will take notice of their pleas and bounce Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone from his post in San Francisco had better settle in for a lot of time on their figurative knees.
Just about the last thing the Vatican ever does, experts say, is strip a bishop of his job because of political trouble in the pews — such as that being caused by a group of more than 100 local Catholics so upset about Cordileone’s conservative policies that they took out a full-page open letter in The Chronicle last week asking the pope to replace him.
“It’s so unusual for a bishop to be removed from office by the pope that there is a Latin term for it,” said the Rev. James Bretzke, professor of moral theology at Boston College. “It’s promoveatur ut amoveatur, which means, ‘Let him be promoted so that he can be removed.’
“That’s the way it’s been for centuries. And that’s the way it is now.”
Church watchers say that’s how St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke wound up being “promoted” to a legal post in the Vatican in 2008, four years after declaring that he would refuse communion to pro-abortion-rights presidential candidate John Kerry, among other provocations. And it’s reportedly how Bishop Joseph Martino was allowed in 2009 to gracefully retire at 63 — 12 years before the usual retirement age for bishops — after alienating his flock in Scranton, Pa., by espousing authoritarian views and closing nearly half the schools and parishes in his diocese.
“People are free to complain to the Vatican about bishops, but there is no formal process for removing them,” said Patricia Miller, an author who writes nationally on Catholic issues. “You can lobby it, and if you have the Vatican’s ear because you are a big donor or someone with big influence, you might get heard some. But the Vatican is not a democracy. It is literally a feudal court, a monarchy.
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