Pope rapidly fills Diocese of Oakland vacancy

Vatican City, Mar 23, 2009 / 08:31 am

This morning Pope Benedict XVI appointed Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone to become the next Bishop of Oakland, Calif.  Currently serving as an auxiliary bishop of San Diego, Bishop Cordileone will become the shepherd of 400,000 Catholics in the Oakland area.

Bishop Cordileone will be taking over after Archbishop Allen Vigneron was appointed to lead the Archdiocese of Detroit in January of this year.

The speed of the appointment may be connected with the news that the interim administrator of the diocese, Fr. Dan Danielson, was accused of blessing homosexual unions prior to being named to oversee the diocese.

A native of San Diego, the 52 year-old bishop attended San Diego State University, the University of San Diego and St. Francis Seminary. Bishop Cordileone completed his seminary formation at Pontifical North American College in Rome.

Cordileone was ordained a priest in 1982 and served for three years as an associate pastor at St. Martin of Tours in La Mesa. In 1985 he returned to Rome to get a doctorate in canon law, and after six years of study returned to California to become the pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Calexico.

Given his expertise in canon law, Cordileone was chosen to serve as a member of the Church’s highest court, the Apostolic Signatura, in 1995.

Fr. Cordileone was consecrated a bishop in 2002 and has served since then in the Diocese of San Diego under Bishop Robert Brom.

Bishop Cordileone will be serving 406,947 laity, 433 priests, 12 permanent deacons and  843 religious in Oakland.