Salvatore Cordileone

San Francisco’s Roman Catholic archbishop, who is at the center of growing debate over his opposition to gay marriage, will miss an annual march in Washington, D.C., next week opposing same-sex marriage, his archdiocese said.

More than 100 Bay Area Catholics went public with their complaints about the San Francisco archbishop, asking Pope Francis to replace Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone with someone more inclusive and less divisive.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote the message in response to a letter sent to him earlier this week by California lawmakers urging him to remove from a teachers’ handbook morality clauses they say are discriminatory and divisive.

The morality clause outlines the church’s teaching that using contraception is a sin and that sex outside of marriage, whether it is in the form of adultery, masturbation, pornography or gay sex, is “gravely evil.”

About 100 people attended a vigil outside the Catholic cathedral in San Francisco to protest the local archbishop’s requirement that teachers at four Catholic high schools lead their public lives in accordance with church teachings on homosexuality.

The Catholic archbishop of San Francisco has unveiled a faculty handbook calling on teachers to lead their public and professional lives consistently with church teachings on homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and other behaviors he describes as evil.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco said Monday it’s his duty to proclaim “the truth about marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife,” even when those views are unpopular. The comment by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone came in response to calls to skip an upcoming March for Marriage event in Washington.

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has joined a high-profile lobbying effort to pressure San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to skip the upcoming “March for Marriage” event, calling it “venom masquerading as virtue.”

SAN FRANCISCO – Top California and San Francisco officials, along with faith, LGBT and civil rights leaders, are calling on San Francisco Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to cancel his participation in an upcoming march and rally against marriage equality for same-sex couples.

San Francisco Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone explains that a U.S.Supreme Court ruling granting same-sex couples the freedom to marry would have horrible consequences “for generations to come.”