William Levada

Archbishop William Joseph Levada is a Roman Catholic priest and is currently the Archbishop of San Francisco. He was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the post of prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on May 13, 2005, and will be resigning his post in San Francisco to assume his duties as prefect in the very near future.

Early life

Archbishop William Joseph Levada of San Francisco is a fourth-generation Californian, born in Long Beach, California on June 15, 1936. His great-grandparents immigrated to the San Francisco Bay area from Portugal and Ireland in the 1860's. Except for a three-year interval when his family lived in Houston, Texas, the Archbishop attended elementary and high schools in Long Beach, followed by four years of seminary college in the Roman Catholic Archidiocese of Los Angeles.

Clerical formation

In 1958 he was sent to pursue his seminary formation in Rome while residing at the North American College of the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he received a doctorate in sacred theology magna cum laude after his ordination to the presbyterate in St. Peter's Basilica on December 20, 1961.

Priestly ministry

Father Levada subsequently spent the following five years in parish work in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, including part-time high school teaching and college campus ministry. He also taught theology at St. John's Seminary School of Theology, located at Camarillo, California in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. During these six years he also served as the first Director of Continuing Education for the Clergy in the Archdiocese. In 1976, at the recommendation of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Monsignor Levada was appointed an Official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican. During his six years of service there, he continued teaching theology part-time as an Instructor at the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1982 his Archbishop, Timothy Cardinal Manning, assigned Monsignor Levada to be Executive Director of the California Catholic Conference of Bishops in Sacramento, the public policy arm of the Church in California. During his two years there he was nominated as auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, and was ordained to the episcopate as titular bishop of Capri on May 12, 1983.

Episcopal Ministry in California and Oregon

Returning to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 1984 he served as episcopal vicar for Santa Barbara County until his 1986 appointment as chancellor and moderator of the curia by the new Archbishop of Los Angeles, his classmate, Roger Cardinal Mahony, for whom he prepared the reorganization of the Archdiocese into five episcopal regions and twenty deaneries, as well as restructuring the diocesan Curia into eight secretariats whose directors formed a Cabinet for the new Archbishop. On July 1, 1986, Bishop Levada was appointed eighth Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, and was installed on September 21. During his nine years in Portland, Archbishop Levada was able to devote time to the recruitment of priestly vocations and enhancement of the seminary at Mt. Angel, where he taught Ecclesiology to 40 theology students one year. He guided the reorganization of Catholic Charities and the Archdiocesan Hispanic Ministry, set up a new retirement fund and home for retired priests, and oversaw the renovation/restoration of St. Mary's Cathedral. A regular contributor to the weekly Catholic Sentinel, the Archbishop also organized the celebration of the Sesquicentennial of the Archdiocese in 1996, the second oldest Metropolitan See in the United States.

Appointed by Pope John Paul II as Coadjutor Archbishop of San Francisco, Archbishop Levada was installed on October 24, 1995, and succeeded Archbishop John Raphael Quinn as seventh Archbishop of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco and Metropolitan of the San Francisco Ecclesiastical Province on December 27, 1995. Since coming to San Francisco, he has been involved on several occasions in delicate negotiations with the City to find a way of implementing gay rights issues in a manner consistent with Catholic teaching. He has also found pastoral uses for several of the churches which had been closed in a process triggered by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Among these were St. Joseph's Village, a homeless shelter and child development center run by Catholic Charities on the site of the former St. Joseph parish; a new campus ministry apostolate for San Francisco State University, at St. Thomas More Church; and the establishment of the new National Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi in San Francisco's first and oldest parish church.

His reestablishment of a Catholic weekly newspaper for the Archdiocese, Catholic San Francisco, has proved popular on all sides. He has also established the Catholic Education Endowment Fund, whose goal of $30,000,000 will increase funds available for annual tuition assistance scholarships from $400,000 to over $2,000,000, thus helping low-income families to afford Catholic education for their children. An October 28 Jubilee Mass 2000 was the first non-baseball event celebrated at the new Pacific Bell Park Giants stadium in the City's downtown bay-front.

Since his ordination to the episcopate, Archbishop Levada has been active on many committees of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as on the governing boards of the Catholic University of America, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the National Catholic Bioethics Center. From 1986 to 1993 he served as the only American bishop on the Editorial Committee of the Vatican Commission for a Catechism of the Catholic Church; he authored the Catechism's Glossary, which was published in the English-language second edition of the Catechism.

In 1997 Archbishop Levada participated in the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for America, and was subsequently named to its post-Synodal Council. In 1998, he consecrated Msgr. John C. Wester to the episcopate as titular bishop of Lamiggiga and auxiliary bishop of San Francisco. From July, 1999, to May, 2000, as Metropolitan bishop, he was assigned additional duties as Apostolic Administrator of his suffragan diocese, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa. During 2000, Archbishop Levada was designated Bishop Co-Chair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue in the United States (ARC-USA). In November the Vatican announced his appointment as a Member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In 2003, Archbishop Levada organized the sesquicentennial celebration of the 150 years of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which culminated in a July 27 Jubilee Mass at his Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption. In January, 2003, he consecrated Msgr. Ignatius C. Wang to the episcopate as titular bishop of Sitipa and auxiliary bishop of San Francisco. Bishop Wang, a native of Beijing, is the first Chinese and first Asian bishop to be ordained for a diocese in the United States. In November, 2003, Levada began a 3-year term as Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine.

Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

On May 13, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI nominated Levada to be the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Levada fills the vacancy caused by Cardinal Ratzinger's elevation to the papacy.

With his nomination, the 68-year-old Levada becomes the man responsible for overseeing all moral and theological matters for the Vatican. He is also the highest-ranking American ever to serve in the Vatican.

It is not yet know when Levada will resign as archbishop of San Francisco and formally be installed as head of the CDF. According to normal protocol, Levada will be elevated to the College of Cardinals at the next consistory.

Sources

• Vatican website announcing Levada's nomination