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Cardinal William J. Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco and of Portland, Ore., and the retired prefect for the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, died in Rome Sept. 26, 2019, at age 83. He is is pictured in a Nov. 21, 2010, photo. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
Updated Oct. 3, 2019, 1:50 p.m.
Catholic San Francisco
Funeral services for Cardinal William J. Levada, who died Sept. 26 in Rome at age 83, will be held Oct. 24 at 10 a.m. at St. Mary’s Cathedral, with Santa Fe, New Mexico, Archbishop John Wester as homilist. Doors open at 9:30.
Visitation, also at the cathedral, is scheduled Oct. 23 from 5-7 p.m., with a 45-minute vigil at 7. Bishop Stephen Lopes of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter will preside and give the homily.
All events are open to the public. Those attending are advised that no parking will be available at the cathedral for the funeral.
The services will be livestreamed and may be viewed on the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s YouTube channel.
The Vatican held a funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica the day after Cardinal Levada’s unexpected death, with Pope Francis presiding at the committal. The cathedral funeral will fulfill the cardinal’s wishes to hold a funeral Mass in the archdiocese.
The pope joined brother bishops and fellow clergy in remembering Cardinal Levada for his influence and example. Many highlighted his dedication to church unity, his work ethic and his pastoral spirit seasoned in service as archbishop of Portland, Oregon, and later San Francisco – qualities that recommended him to Pope Benedict XVI for one of the Vatican’s most high-profile jobs, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 2005.
Pope Francis sent “heartfelt condolences” to Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and the people of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and remembered with “immense gratitude the late cardinal’s years of priestly and episcopal ministry among Christ’s flock in Los Angeles, Portland and San Francisco, his singular contributions to catechesis, education and administration, and his distinguished service to the Apostolic See.”
Archbishop Cordileone said he had known the cardinal "ever since he was my seminar moderator in my first year of theology. I always appreciated his guidance and his commitment to the integrity of the church’s faith.”
As archbishop of San Francisco, Cardinal Levada was a “careful planner, but he also very much enjoyed meeting and dining with a wide variety of people,” often at the archbishop’s residence, Archbishop Cordileone said.
Msgr. Harry Schlitt, a longtime San Francisco pastor who served as vicar general of the archdiocese and moderator of the curia under Cardinal Levada, told Catholic San Francisco that the cardinal’s most important contributions to the church, in San Francisco and globally, were “his spirituality and his ability to take a task and see it through.”
The cardinal had a tireless work ethic, Msgr. Schlitt said. After dinner, the two would say evening prayer and then the cardinal would return to his desk.
Cardinal Levada would “take up tasks no one else wanted to do and complete them,” Msgr. Schlitt said. “That’s why the Holy Father called on him to take up such an important position in Rome, because he knew Cardinal Levada would put his nose in the grindstone and get the job done.”
Cardinal Levada was also interested in the city and neighborhoods he shepherded. Msgr. Schlitt said the cardinal would take the bus to neighborhoods he didn’t know and walk around for several blocks.
“It was very important for him to get a grasp of the neighborhoods and where people lived and where they came from,” Msgr. Schlitt said. “He certainly got a good feeling about what a parish was and where they were and how they operated, according to the people who lived in those neighborhoods. Being in San Francisco pastorally was very important for him.”
Santa Fe Archbishop Wester, who was ordained as an auxiliary bishop by Cardinal Levada in 1998, said, "The cardinal always gave of himself selflessly to the church that he loved so much, and he used all of his abilities in her service. The gift that always impressed me most was the gift of his heart. He had great compassion for the priests and people of the church.”
Bishop Steven Lopes of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, who was ordained by Cardinal Levada and served as his aide at the doctrinal congregation, said “The cardinal’s work as Prefect of the Congregation was a continuation of his life-long passion for the communion of the church. Having served long years as a diocesan bishop, he never lost sight of the essential pastoral dimension of his own vocation and the mission of the congregation in service to the People of God.”
Cardinal Levada’s appointment marked the first time a U.S. prelate had headed the congregation. He served in that position until 2012.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Houston, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, said the late cardinal's ministry "was one of expanding service to those around him. Cardinal Levada’s intellect and pastoral sense called him from parish priest to archbishop to prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”
Before his Vatican appointment, he had served as archbishop of San Francisco since 1995; archbishop of Portland, 1986-95, and an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, 1983-86.
Throughout his episcopal ministry, Cardinal Levada displayed a gift for organizing ministries to strengthen the church's mission. As an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, he oversaw a reorganization plan that divided the archdiocese into five sub-regions. Later in Portland, he streamlined the diocesan branch of Catholic Charities, restructured outreach to Hispanic Catholics, renovated the cathedral, and increased funding for priests’ retirement and started a new program for priestly vocations.
For decades, he was a frequent collaborator with the Vatican and with the future Pope Benedict. He was a doctrinal congregation staff member from 1976 to 1982 and was a bishop-member of the congregation beginning in 2000. In the 1980s, he worked with then-Cardinal Ratzinger as one of a small group of bishops appointed to write the "Catechism of the Catholic Church."
Cardinal Levada was a key figure in the church's efforts to eliminate priestly sexual abuse. He headed the Vatican agency that oversaw the handling of priestly sexual abuse cases; in 2002, he was a member of the U.S.-Vatican commission that made final revisions to the sex abuse norms in the United States, which laid out a strict policy on priestly sex abuse and provided for removal from ministry or laicization of priests.
In an article published last March in Catholic San Francisco after the Vatican summit on clergy sex abuse, Cardinal Levada praised the concrete steps the church has taken to combat abuse and criticized the failure to recognize them.
The cardinal said, "Helping victims of sexual abuse is an ongoing responsibility" and that bishops conferences were committed to accountability.
"Helping to heal the wounds in the body of Christ, caused by these sins and crimes of sexual abuse, must continue to be part of our spiritual course of action for the future," he said.
Cardinal Levada reflected on his service for the congregation in a 2013 interview with the Irish Catholic in 2013.
"If you are working for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it helps to have a pretty thick skin so that you aren't overly sensitive if you are criticized," he said, adding that the congregation should not be above criticism.
In a 2006 decision approved by Pope Benedict, Cardinal Levada ruled that 86-year-old Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, should not exercise his priestly ministry publicly. Father Degollado was accused of sexually abusing minors, but the Vatican said it would not begin a canonical process against him because of his advanced age and poor health.
In 2009, Cardinal Levada ordered a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a Maryland-based umbrella group that claims about 1,500 leaders of U.S. women's communities as members. Three years later, he appointed then-Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to provide "review, guidance and approval, where necessary, of the work" of the LCWR.
The appointment came the same day the congregation released an eight-page "doctrinal assessment" of the LCWR, citing "serious doctrinal problems which affect many in consecrated life," and announced a reform of the organization to ensure its fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women's ordination and homosexuality.
The LCWR national board criticized the Vatican's action as "based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency," saying it had "caused scandal and pain throughout the church community and created greater polarization." The process ended in 2015 with no new disciplinary measures or controls.
In the Irish Catholic interview, Cardinal Levada rejected media portrayals that pitted Pope Francis against retired Pope Benedict.
The cardinal rejected a "certain tendency that I find in some of the media presentations: 'Well, now we have a pope who does this, and he's contradicting what the previous pope did or he's turning things into a different story' and so forth. I think that's way overdone."
Cardinal Levada warned that "this, ultimately, makes the pope less a sign of unity and (instead) a sign of division, which he is not."
He said he was impressed by Pope Francis' "reminders to the church and the world about the poor, people who are easily forgotten or put aside out of our mind and vision."
On the decision of Pope Benedict to resign, Cardinal Levada said he believes that was "a giant step in regard to the future of the church and the future of the papacy, so that this particular question can be resolved by any future pope because of what he (Benedict) has done."
"I think that's a relief, certainly for someone who is in the Sistine Chapel and sees his name being put forward as a future pope, to have that in the back of his mind," he said.
Before he attended the conclave that elected Pope Francis, Cardinal Levada was prescient about the most pressing issues the next pope would have to address. The future pope, he said, would need to find “Better ways of communication – better ways of presenting the beauty of the faith and its truth and what it offers to people.
“I’ve talked before about the need to rekindle a solid, friendly apologetics for intelligent Catholics,” he said, adding that Catholics catechized as children make great progress in their careers but less so in their faith.
The cardinal’s focus on communication also contributed to his decision to start a newspaper for the archdiocese, with the first issue of Catholic San Francisco published Feb. 12, 1999. In a column in that issue, he said the paper developed from a pastoral plan that was nearing completion when he was appointed coadjutor archbishop in late 1995.
He expressed hope that the paper “will be our companion in building up our community of faith here in this local church.”
Cardinal Levada also served as president of the Pontifical Bible Commission and the International Theological Commission.
William Joseph Levada was born June 15, 1936, in Long Beach. His great-grandparents had immigrated to California from Portugal and Ireland in the 1860s.
After seminary studies in California, he was sent to Rome's Pontifical North American College, earning a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He was ordained a priest in St. Peter's Basilica Dec. 20, 1961.
He returned to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and worked as an associate pastor, teacher and campus ministry chaplain. In 1976, he returned to Rome as a staff official of the doctrinal congregation. During his six years of service there, he continued teaching theology part-time at Gregorian University.
He returned to California in 1982 and was named secretary of the California Catholic Conference, a public policy agency of the state's bishops. He was named an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles in 1983 and was ordained a bishop March 25 of that year.
Pope Benedict elevated him to cardinal in 2006.
Cardinal Levada's death leaves the College of Cardinals with 212 members, 118 of whom are under the age of 80 and thus eligible to vote in a conclave. Pope Francis will create 13 new cardinals Oct. 5; 10 of them are under age 80.
Cardinal Levada was predeceased by his sister, Dolores, in 2007.
Catholic News Service contributed.