The DUI charge is not enough to force him to resign, most Catholic observers said, and the Vatican will likely remain quiet about the arrest. Cordileone is still scheduled to be installed as the Archbishop of San Francisco on Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, as well as honored at a mass in Oakland the Sunday before.
A week later, on Oct. 9, he will be arraigned in San Diego Superior Court.
A San Diego native, Cordileone was ordained as a priest in the Diocese of San Diego in 1982.
It was also in San Diego that Cordileone, at that point an auxiliary bishop of San Diego, began his work on Proposition 8, reaching out to key backers and helping to raise $1.5 million in donations to fuel the campaign.
A year after the ballot’s passage in 2009, Cordileone was appointed the Bishop of Oakland.
He has continued his work on marriage issues as the chairman of the subcommittee for the promotion and defense of marriage for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
On immigration, Cordileone, who speaks fluent Spanish, has taken a more liberal stance, calling for reform and supporting President Obama’s DREAM Act to allow young immigrants brought to the United States by their parents to avoid deportation.
“He will be judged on what he does as archbishop. As long as this doesn’t happen again, I don’t think it will have that big of an impact on his career,” said Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. “Five years from now, this will be ancient history.”
He may yet make Cardinal.