When Pope Francis lands in Washington DC on Tuesday, he’ll be greeted by the California priest who’s been branded as an orthodox counterpoint to Francis’s inclusive reformism, a protector of old-school Roman Catholic beliefs currently waging an unpopular war against progressive values in San Francisco’s parochial schools: Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.  “I’m labeled as ultra-conservative because I’ve been outspoken on issues that are politically unpopular and on the conservative side of the political spectrum,” said Cordileone, a balding man with water-colored blue eyes who serves as prelate to the approximately 500,000 Catholics in the San Francisco area, and was a key force behind the state’s 2008 ban on same-sex marriage that was ultimately overturned by courts. “I don’t want to engage in a war. I hope that people can be reasonable and talk things through, and my track record shows that I am willing to make accommodations … but I won’t compromise principle.”  Related: Pope Francis journeys to Washington to begin historic US visit – live updates  That line-in-the-chancel position on some of the key topics dividing American Catholics today – especially issues of family and sexuality – has angered the Bay Area faithful and drawn national attention leading to unfavorable comparisons to Pope Francis. The controversy became so acrid that in April, more than 100 prominent members of the local church took out a full-page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle asking the pope to remove Cordileone from his position for fostering “an atmosphere of division and intolerance”.  But Cordileone, a canon lawyer who describes himself as “somewhat shy”, said in an interview with the Guardian that his views are in line with the pope’s – Francis may just be better at communicating them.  “I say things that make people mad. I know that. I try to say them in as clear and compassionate of a way as possible,” he said. “Francis is in real life what he’s like in the media – very affable and easy-going and warm … I am more of an introvert.”  Before coming to San Francisco, Cordileone was best known for helping to raise more than $1m to get California’s same-sex marriage ban on the ballot, while calling changes to the traditional institution of marriage between a man and a woman to be “the ultimate attack of the Evil One”.  Related: US progressives hope Pope Francis can bring moral force to key issues  But the most recent complaints against Cordileone are about his push to increase “Catholic identity” in the four high schools directly under his control in the Bay Area.  After word started to spread in early 2015 that Cordileone planned to impose “morality clauses” on teachers, critics, including parents and students, formed an opposition group called #TeachAcceptance. The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board and columnists have repeatedly castigated his position and hundreds turned out at rallies to condemn his actions. Despite that revolt against his leadership, Cordileone is undaunted in his push to recalibrate what Catholic education should be – or about giving his perceptions of what it means to be Catholic in a city that is known for its welcoming tolerance of just about any lifestyle other than overt conservatism.  “I didn’t respond to the call to be a priest to have a carefree life, an easy life. I’ll do what I need to do,” he said.  To adversaries, including many of the affected teachers, the Catholic identity push is a “very smart witch-hunt, a very well-crafted witch-hunt”, meant to “create an atmosphere where people self-select out of the system, whether they are a gay teacher, or a divorced teacher or whatever”, said Sal Curcio, an instructor at Sacred Heart Cathedral high school, an $18,000-a-year institution where elite families have long sent their children as much for the pedigree as the education, and where much of the opposition to Cordileone is centered. “The problem with Cordileone and the people like him, there is not room for multiple viewpoints. He’s is in a black-and-white world and the world isn’t black and white”.  Other critics see the archbishop’s actions as being about more than just schools, a broader attempt to draw attention to what some orthodox Catholics see as a dilution of doctrine that has taken place over many years, but become highly visible to the world under Francis’s open-tent approach. Cordileone is a disciple of Cardinal Raymond Burke, a doctrinal hardliner that Pope Francis demoted and who has publicly said he will resist any push to liberalize church rules especially around same-sex marriage.  “I think it’s a last stand and San Francisco is attractive because of history and timing”, said Tom Ammiano, a former city supervisor and state assembly member who has a long history as a LGBT activist. “The whole thing … is an attempt to have a bully pulpit, and what better place than San Francisco to be contrarian?”  Related: Have you met a pope? Share your photos, videos and stories  Cordileone became the ninth archbishop of San Francisco in 2012, just 100 years after his fisherman grandfather immigrated to that city from Sicily. He largely escaped notice outside of the Bay Area until the fall of 2014, when the archdiocese’s high schools – some of the few unionized religious schools on the west coast – began labor negotiations.  Cordileone wanted language in the new contract that labeled teachers as ministers. That caused widespread dissent within the union because it could give the church a “ministerial exception”– the legal right based on religious freedom to be exempt from federal anti-discrimination laws in hiring and firing.  Around the same time, Cordileone started the Office of Catholic Identity Assessment, charged with ensuring his schools were integrating church teachings in a comprehensive way. He also made changes to the employee handbooks at these high schools that included language that dictated teachers’ behavior both at work and in their private lives concerning “hot-button issues, and most of them had to do with sexuality”, said Curcio. An early version labeled “sins” including masturbation, use of contraception and adultery as “ evil” and called out the “grave depravity” of “homsexual acts”.  Cordileone “wanted us basically in our personal lives to support the church and the church’s position regardless of our conscience, regardless of our religious affiliation, whether we were Catholic or Hindu or whatever”, said Curcio. “We have to basically in our personal lives be supportive of Catholic doctrine.”  The acrimony over the inclusion of that type of directive in both the contract (recently ratified by a 90-80 vote) and the handbook (which will be reviewed in the coming year before being implemented) caused Cordileone to back down in “tone but not content”, said Curcio. Wording in the final labor contract dropped the minister title but included clauses about the religious nature of all teachers, regardless of subject.  Cordileone is open about his belief that teachers play a vital role in passing on doctrine to the next generation of Catholics, and would like to see more teachers who commit to living lifestyles that exemplify the principles they will be asked to integrate into their daily lessons.  “They should not visibly contradict our values and what we believe in,” he said. “If an organization is very clear on what its mission is, it’s going to be very clear on who it wants to entrust with furthering that mission and therefore who it does not want to include in furthering its mission.”  That’s a long way from “who am I to judge?”  Although Cordileone can be abrasive and represents an old-guard viewpoint, religious experts agree that he is not preaching anything that isn’t part of church teachings, and that the tenets of the church have not been altered by Francis, despite cultural and media observations about his rhetoric.  Related: Philadelphia archbishop: Pope Francis is not as liberal as Americans think  “Francis hasn’t changed any official doctrine at all,” said Melissa Wilde, associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. “That’s an important thing to be clear on. A pope can change the tone and tenor of debate by making statements, but everything he’s done is a matter of nuance and focus. He hasn’t said, ‘You know what, go do your thing. We don’t care.’”  And in areas like immigration, Cordileone, who served for four years as a parish priest in San Diego at a predominantly Latino church just four blocks from the border, is a liberal and vocal advocate for migrants.  He took a contentious progressive position when 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was fatally shot on 1 July on San Francisco’s waterfront by an undocumented immigrant who was also a repeat felon. The incident sparked a backlash against “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco, a catch-all term for municipalities that have rules against assisting the federal government on immigration affairs. Cordileone cautioned local and federal lawmakers “to not kind of overreact to this”, he said, “to again assess all of the circumstances around what really happened so we don’t take draconian measures that are going to hurt the innocent”.  Kevin Appleby, director of migration policy at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Cordileone has a long history of championing immigration rights. “He’s not afraid to speak out on issues that are controversial. He’s not afraid to wade into it even it’s a prickly issue,” he said.  Cordileone said for his part, he views himself as outside of politics, but willing to step in when his faith calls for it. “I’ve never liked this labeling conservative or liberal in terms of the church,” he said. “Those labels apply to politics. In terms of church, we should not be looking at the world through a political lens. We look at it through a lens of what is going to affirm human dignity and the flourishing of a human person. What is a consistent ethic of life. And politically, we are going to land on different sides of the spectrum depending on what the issue is.”  His fluent Spanish and “humble and straightforward” approach have made him popular with many Latino Catholics in San Francisco, who tend to agree with his teachings, said Oscar Avila, a 10-year member of St Peter’s in the heavily Latino neighborhood of the Mission. Last Sunday, Cordileone performed mass there to bless congregation members going to the canonization of Junipero Serra in Washington DC this week. The packed pink-walled church was attentive and welcoming of his message about El Señor, delivered not in the pulpit, but standing just in front of the first pews.  “The bishop has a lot of pressure because there are different points of view from every angle, every neighborhood in the city,” said Avila. “From the Latin community, we are totally fine with his lead.”  That dichotomy, said Cordileone, is what makes San Francisco a “complex kind of a place”. He said while he thought there “would be some controversy” over the school issues, he did not expect the maelstrom of dissent it set off, or the national media attention it garnered. And he doesn’t consider himself in opposition to the pope.  “Why can’t someone call me a reformer?” he wondered. “I’m certainly trying to reform our schools.”
Known for his vehement opposition to same-sex marriage and recent ‘morality’ plan for San Francisco’s Catholic schools, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone says he shares similar beliefs to the pontiff – but Pope Francis is just more charismatic