PHOTOS: Archbishop Jose Gomez

Cardinal Roger Mahony, left, and his designated successor as head of the L.A. archdiocese, Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio, leave a news conference at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles.
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Archbishop Jose Gomez, speaking at a news conference, says Los Angeles, “like no other city in the world, has the global face of the Catholic Church.”
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Cardinal Roger Mahony introduces Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio on Tuesday as his successor to lead the Los Angeles Archdiocese, the nation’s most populous.
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Pope Benedict XVI bestows the pallium, or a woolen shawl, on Jose Gomez, archbishop of San Antonio, during a Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican in 2005. The appointment of the 58-year-old Gomez as coadjutor for the Los Angeles archdiocese puts him in line to become the highest-ranking Latino in the American Catholic hierarchy.
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Haitian-born Bishop Guy Sansaricq, auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Papal Nuncio Bernardito Auza; Jose Gomez, Archbishop of San Antonio; Cardinal Sean O’Malley, archbishop of Boston; and Joseph Lafontant, Catholic Church representative in Haiti, evaluate the earthquake damage at the National Cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last month, after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Jan. 12.
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Archbishop-elect Jose Gomez greets parishioners in 2005 following Ash Wednesday services at Mission San Jose in San Antonio. Gomez built a reputation in San Antonio as a staunch traditionalist who reversed some of the more liberal-leaning initiatives of his predecessor.
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Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio takes questions from the media at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Gomez was named to succeed the archbishop of Los Angeles, the Holy See’s most significant acknowledgment to date of the growing importance of Latinos in the American church. The appointment also was evidence that Pope Benedict XVI wants a strong defender of orthodoxy leading the largest diocese in the nation. Gomez, 58, is an archbishop of Opus Dei, the conservative movement favored by the Vatican.
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