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For Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, the second son and third of four children born into a Sicilian working-class family of fishermen and farmers and schooled in the public system through his freshman year in college, Catholic education holds top priority as a transformative tool for forming faith, building bonds, constructing communities and strengthening society.

Can you imagine the American Catholic Church today without Catholic schools? I certainly cannot. Since 1727, when the Ursuline sisters founded their academy in New Orleans, Catholic schools have taught America’s children. The schools educated the sons and daughters of immigrants.

" ... it is silence that makes room for God, and so keeps us focused on worship of the one true God, and not of the many contemporary idols that are vying for our loyalty," Archbishop Cordileone said.

During Advent, take Paul's counsel to heed the "contrast between night and day, darkness and light." No less now than in Paul's day, living out our baptism means embracing virtue and resisting the vices of the age.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Mary unites all of God’s children, sparking conversions among those of different faiths, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone said Nov. 16.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco held its second annual Mass for the Homeless Dead on Nov. 23 at Church of the Visitacion in San Francisco. According to its sponsor, the archdiocesan Office of Human Life & Dignity, the Mass gives Catholics an opportunity “to pray for those who are often forgotten both in life and in death.”

The Blessed Virgin feeds souls hungering for beauty, and unites all God's children in a world suffering from "spiritual misery," Archbishop Cordileone said in his homily at the Mass of the Americas Nov. 16 at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

As we approach October, the month of the Holy Rosary, we remember and rededicate ourselves to the simple request of Our Lady at Fatima that the whole world recite the Rosary daily for peace in the family and in the world.

Father Barouyr Shernezian, pastor of St. Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Orthodox Church in San Francisco joined Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone for vespers at Star of the Sea Church in San Francisco June 21. The service began the celebration of Religious Freedom Week June 22-29.

It is my consistent experience and observation that, even aware of the faults and foibles of their priest, people find themselves loving and admiring their priest when they know he is there for them, when they know that his life is characterized by a self-giving love expressed in pastoral presence and attentiveness that is intense.

" ... this is God’s gift to us, a help for us to ready ourselves to receive His greatest gift of all: the Resurrection of His Son from the dead. If we live this gift of God well, the gift of our Christian and personal vocation in the historical circumstances of our life, then we will be prepared for the moment when we will look at the true, unveiled face of His glorified risen Son, and be found fit for sharing his glory in heaven. This is the gift of true Easter joy ... ."

"Lent is now coming to its culmination; it is a reminder to us of our need of constant purification, so that we can more perfectly obey the commandment of following the example of the one who lowered himself for us; a time to repent, return, believe and renew ourselves in living according to our Christian dignity," Archbishop Cordileone said in his homily at Holy Thursday Mass April 18.

"How did this burning building move so many?" Archbishop Cordileone asks in a reflection on the Notre Dame Cathedral fire. "Sacred beauty has a power. It moves us because Beauty is not just a frill or a decoration, it is, along with Truth and Goodness, one of the three faces of God. Standing before the Rose Window, looking up at the awesome Gothic ceilings, praying with people around the world, we are reminded that, as human beings created in God’s image, we do not live by bread alone.  Notre Dame Cathedral calls out to us to remember that we have souls.  It reminds us that God has given us the capacity to create sacred beauty that has lasting value, which points us beyond this world alone."

St. John Vianney is a role model of priestly selflessness, a standard all priests and priests in training can look to in a vocation that risks discouragement as priests discover their own and others' shortcomings, Archbishop Cordileone says. He made the remarks in his homily at a votive Mass of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, March 1, 2019, St. Augustine Church, South San Francisco, with priests of the archdiocese in the presence of a relic of the incorruptible heart of St. John Vianney. Readings: 1 Jn 4:7-16; Ps 34; Jn 10:11-18.

A wise Biblical scholar once said: “The only secure foundation for a kingdom is sacrificial love.”  We hear a lot about “kingdom building” these days, and as long as we keep that in the abstract, it stays safe and comfortable for us.  But if we want to bring that down into the concrete, where it really makes a difference, we have to live it out in the specific communities of our day-to-day life, each according to his or her own vocation in life: family, parish, religious community, school, and so forth.  This is where sacrificial love ceases to be a pious platitude, and takes on flesh – the only way for a community to thrive.

'We sacrifice the most vulnerable life – in the womb – and so we end up destroying marriage," Archbishop Cordileone said. "That is the whole point of marriage, to welcome life into the world, to care and nourish and love that life so that the child might be able to know and be loved by the child's mother and father – the mother and father being connected to each other and together to the children they bring into the world. Marriage thus makes no more sense if the little ones are sacrificed to demons."

Now, at this “acceptable time,” Lent begins. We are called again to stop the ordinary routine, evaluate the areas where we have strayed from the ideals of Christian life, and make a deliberate turning back to God. In these days we only have to turn on the news to see vivid evidence of just how far our culture is from Christian ideals: The passing of horrific laws that permit the killing of full-term infants; family separation resulting from oppressive social and economic forces, affecting especially vulnerable immigrant families; an epidemic of homelessness; revelations of abuse of power even within the hierarchy of the Church; the list goes on and on.

This week we celebrate the mission of Catholic schools and their cherished legacy. We also recommit ourselves to assuring their future because they are critical to the life of the Church. Catholics schools are privileged places for young people to encounter Jesus Christ through Catholic faith, Catholic culture, and the Catholic intellectual tradition on a daily basis as they learn and grow and develop. Because Catholic schools are called to be, as Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, of Vancouver states, “inspired by a supernatural vision, founded on Christian anthropology, animated by communion and community, imbued with a Catholic worldview throughout the curriculum, and sustained by Gospel witness,“ they are the ideal and obvious institutions to help address a growing problem facing the Catholic Church.

As I write this message to you, I am in Baltimore, Maryland, for the plenary assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I can tell you I came prepared to work with my fellow bishops to move aggressively forward in dealing with the abuse issues that are confronting our Church right now, and will continue to do so.

In a statement here in part, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone praised the courage and sanctity of St. Oscar Romero and urged Christians to imitate his witness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “In his final homily, at the hospital chapel Mass where he was mortally shot March 24, 1980, Archbishop Romero said, ‘… one must not love oneself so much as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us.’”