WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — President Donald Trump has asked San Francisco’s Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone to serve on the advisory board for the Religious Liberty Commission, a body established by a White House Executive Order earlier this month.
Archbishop Cordileone has accepted.
“Religious liberty is a critical issue in our time that needs to be defended and addressed,”Cordileone explained. “I am happy to join my brother bishops in providing a Catholic voice on this important topic at a national level.”
Cordileone serves on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth as well as on its Committee for Canonical Affairs and Church Governance.
Other Catholic clergy named as advisory board members include Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, who spearheaded the national “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign in 2012 to defend religious liberty; Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, who currently chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Religious Liberty; and Father Thomas Ferguson, both pastor of Good Shepherd Parish in Alexandria, Virginia, and author of Catholic and American: The Political Theology of John Courtney Murray.
On May 1st, the President signed an executive order (EO) establishing the Religious Liberty Commission, designating Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as chair and Dr. Ben Carson as vice chair, as well as 11 other commission members.
According to the EO, the purpose of the Commission is to “advise the White House Faith Office and the Domestic Policy Council on religious liberty policies of the United States,” for example by “recommending steps to secure domestic religious liberty.”
Catholic members of the commission include the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan; Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the popular Word on Fire media organization, and Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Institute.
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Respect from orthodox Catholics through unwavering commitment to doctrine
Archbishop Cordileone has won respect from orthodox Catholics through his unwavering commitment to Church teaching and his advocating for more reverence in the liturgy.
Cordileone revealed last month that his own parish, St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral, has begun celebrating Mass ad orientem, with the priest facing the altar during the liturgy of the Eucharist.
In an April 6 op-ed published in the National Catholic Register, Cordileone celebrated a trend toward more reverence during Mass and encouraged faithful Catholics to join him at a sacred liturgy conference in July.
“To me, it is heartening how many young people are drawn to classic Catholic practices that so effectively express transcendent realities,” Cordileone declared.
“What is classically Catholic works. It’s time to rebuild with confidence on a solid foundation, including on our knees in reverence before Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he continued.
Cordileone has said that the root problem facing society is a “loss of the sense of the sacred,” as many former Catholics have fallen away from their faith in recent years.
“We are seeing it played out before our very eyes: the failure to evangelize the next generation of young Catholics in our pews leading to a cascading decline in Catholic faith and practice, as witnessed by the decline in Mass attendance, marriages, baptisms, and religious vocations,” he explained.
Most recently, the San Francisco archbishop urged priests to support laity who want to receive Holy Communion on the tongue while kneeling.
“Why don’t you kneel?” he asked on social media, adding that “we need to permit those who want to kneel to kneel for Holy Communion.”
In December, Archbishop Cordileone launched a new project to encourage devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe — “Project Guadalupe 2031” — leading up to the 500th anniversary of her apparitions.
He called on all Catholics to consecrate their families to Our Lady of Guadalupe and enthrone her image in their homes ahead of the 500th anniversary of her apparitions in Mexico.
Also in December, Cordileone issued a statement in response to former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rejection of his ban on her receiving Holy Communion, urging Catholics to pray for her “conversion on the issue of human life in the womb.”
Pelosi had boasted of receiving Holy communion in defiance of his ban
Earlier in 2024, Cordileone launched a project called the “Requiem for the Forgotten” to honor the Catholic martyrs of communism.
In an essay titled, “Modern Martyrs of Communism,” Cordileone explained how Catholics “must once again sing our own songs and tell our own stories, so that we can share the truth, goodness, and beauty of faith with the world.”
In 2023, Archbishop Cordileone and Oakland Bishop Michael Barber published a joint letter condemning gender ideology, declaring that the pervasive ideology asserting that people can be born in the wrong body or switch genders is “radically opposed to a sound understanding of human nature.”
READ: Archbishop Cordileone promotes kneeling for Holy Communion on social media
