The following comes from a Sept. 15 posting on Rorate Caeli.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco is not only a known “culture warrior” but is also the Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. Not surprisingly, he was elected by his fellow US bishops in November 2014 as one of two “alternates” for the four USCCB delegates to the Synod of 2015. The other alternate was Blase Cupich, at that time the Archbishop-elect of Chicago.

Today’s final list of Synod members includes 8 Americans: the four delegates elected by the US bishops (Archbishops Joseph Kurtz, Charles Chaput and Jose Gomez and Cardinal Daniel DiNardo), and four papal appointees: Cardinals Timothy Dolan and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop Blase Cupich, and Bishop George Murry SJ.

How interesting that of the six bishops originally elected last year by the US Bishops to represent them in this year’s Synod either as delegates or alternates, the ONLY ONE who will not be able to make it is Salvatore Cordileone, who is actually the US episcopate’s point man on the “promotion and defense of marriage”?

Underlining his non-appointment is the fact that Pope Francis appointed four US prelates, three of whom had not even been elected by their peers to represent them in this year’s Synod. No, he was not excluded because there was no space for him anymore, Neither could he have been excluded because he is “unknown” — his position as an alternate, if nothing else, would certainly have put him within the Pope’s attention as he (or his closest advisers) studied whom else to appoint to the Synod.