CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Times
Steve Marble
A San Francisco archbishop who pushed a divisive yet successful 2008 California ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage has died.
George H. Niederauer died Tuesday of lung cancer at a San Rafael care facility, the Archdiocese of San Francisco announced. He was 80.
Niederauer was regarded as a compassionate and tolerant leader when he was named archbishop after serving more than a decade as bishop of Salt Lake City, shifting from what then was one of the most conservative dioceses to the very epicenter of the gay rights movement. …
In 2005 he apologized for writing a letter to an Orange County judge, urging that a priest be spared prison time after being convicted on 26 counts of felony child sexual abuse. Indeed, Father Andrew Christian Anderson avoided time behind bars, until he was arrested four years later on suspicion of sodomizing a 14-year-old boy.
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