SF Archbishop Arrested on Dui in San Diego

By Debbi Baker
U-T San Diego
August 27, 2012

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/aug/27/sf-archbishop-arrested-dui-charges-san-diego/

This photo of Archbishop-elect Salvatore Cordileone was taken in March, 2007 at a mass at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Mira Mesa. — U-T San Diego

The archbishop-elect of San Francisco for the Roman Catholic Church was arrested and jailed Saturday in San Diego on suspicion of drunken driving, police said Monday.

Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, 56, who was appointed archbishop in July, was taken into custody at 12:26 a.m. after being stopped at a DUI checkpoint near San Diego State University, police said.

Cordileone was booked into county jail on a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence and later posted bail. Ten others also were arrested at the checkpoint, police said.

A San Diego native, Cordileone has been serving as Oakland’s bishop and is set to be installed as San Francisco’s archbishop in October. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him to the post.

Cordileone issued a statement Monday saying he was driving his mother home after having had dinner at some friends’ house when police stopped him. He said he was found to be over the 0.08 percent legal blood-alcohol level.

“I apologize for my error in judgment and feel shame for the disgrace I have brought upon the Church and myself,” he said. “I will repay my debt to society and I ask forgiveness from my family and my friends and co-workers at the Diocese of Oakland and the Archdiocese of San Francisco. I pray that God, in His inscrutable wisdom, will bring some good out of this.”

Cordileone gained attention when he worked to qualify Proposition 8 for the ballot. Voters in 2008 approved the measure, which banned same-sex marriage in California, and Cordileone worked for its passage.

He was ordained as a bishop in August 2002, after the late Pope John Paul II appointed him the auxiliary bishop of San Diego.

A priest for 30 years, Cordileone formerly served as associate pastor of St. Martin of Tours Parish in La Mesa and as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Calexico.

He served in Rome for seven years as an assistant at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial body in the Vatican.