WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service via Crux
September 27, 2019
U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, who died Sept. 26 in Rome, is well-known as the retired head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, but his experience leading major U.S. dioceses prepared him for this role.
“I firmly believe that what I have experienced in my ministry among God’s people here in the Archdiocese of San Francisco has been a great grace for me and has enriched me for the new service to the universal church to which our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has called me now,” he said during a Mass attended by more than 3,000 people at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, just before he left the archdiocese in 2005.
He also told the congregation that his 10 years as archbishop there had been “a significant part of my life as a man, a priest and a bishop.”
When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, he named Levada to replace him as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican agency charged with protecting and promoting the church’s teachings on faith and morals. It was the first time a U.S. prelate had led the congregation.
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