SAN FRANCISCO (CA)
Mercury News
By Julie Sevrens Lyons
Mercury News
Just 10 minutes before Archbishop William J. Levada gave his farewell Mass in San Francisco on Sunday, about 3,000 supporters loaded their cameras with film and eagerly filled up every one of the more than 200 pews in St. Mary's Cathedral.
Outside, his detractors staged a silent vigil, and one helped serve the embattled church head with a subpoena -- ordering him to appear in a Hayward law office on Friday to discuss his handling of sex abuse cases involving clergy members while he was the archbishop of Portland, Ore.
The end of Levada's 10-year reign as the leader of the San Francisco Archdiocese did nothing to end the controversy that has swirled around the man who goes to Rome later this month to fill the highest Vatican position ever held by an American.