Cardinal William Levada's legacy of service

Cardinal William J. Levada is pictured in a March 8, 2010, photo. (CNS photo/Art Babych)

Sept. 27, 2019
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY – U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, former head of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation and retired archbishop of San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, died Sept. 26 in Rome. He was 83.

Announcing the news, Archbishop Salvatore J. 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.

"During his time 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, very often in the Archbishop's residence where I now live.  After San Francisco, he went to Rome and that became his favorite place to stay.  He had friends and acquaintances throughout the Vatican, and he also enjoyed entertaining friends from San Francisco who were visiting," the archbishop said. 

Condolences poured in from around the church, testifying to Cardinal Levada's influence and example during his long career. Pope Francis sent “heartfelt condolences” to the archbishop and people of the archdiocese, 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 John Wester of Santa Fe 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.” Archbishop Wester was ordained as an auxiliary bishop by Cardinal Levada in 1998. 

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Houston, president of the USCCB, 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. He was a friend and brother. Eternal rest grant unto him.” 

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, he named then-Archbishop Levada to replace him as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican agency charged with protecting and promoting the church's teachings on faith and morals. It was the first time a U.S. prelate had headed the congregation, and Cardinal Levada served in that position until 2012.

Before his Vatican appointment, he had served as archbishop of San Francisco since 1995; archbishop of Portland, Oregon, 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. 

During a Mass attended by more than 3,000 people at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, just before he left the archdiocese in 2005, Cardinal Levada said "I firmly believe that what I have experienced in my ministry among God's people here in the Archdiocese of San Francisco has been a great grace for me and has enriched me for the new service to the universal church to which our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has called me now."

He also told the congregation that his 10 years as archbishop there had been "a significant part of my life as a man, a priest and a bishop."

He told a Synod of Bishops in 1997 that his own experience in San Francisco had taught him how easily dialogue can be overtaken by political pressure on this issue.

"The city's human rights commission named me as contributing to a 'climate' of discrimination against homosexuals because I said public recognition should not be given to so-called 'gay marriages,'" he said.

As archbishop he also opposed a city ordinance requiring all agencies contracting with the city to provide spousal benefits to domestic partners of their employees. Noncompliance could have jeopardized the church's social service contracts with the city. The city of San Francisco changed the ordinance so that employees of church agencies could designate any legally domiciled member of their household for spousal benefits.

In 2004, Archbishop Levada helped lead a prayer rally for the defense and promotion of marriage after the city of San Francisco decided to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

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 summet on sexual 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. 

In an interview with the Irish Catholic in 2013, Cardinal Levada said: "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." However, he also said 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.

William Joseph Levada was born June 15, 1936, in Long Beach, California. 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.

Pope Francis presided over the rite of commendation during the cardinal's funeral in St. Peter's Basilica Sept. 27.

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.