SF archbishop appointed

During a news conference, Niederauer said he was looking forward to meeting and working with San Francisco's community because it's "richly varied _ socially, ethnically and culturally."

He said he supports the church's teachings on abortion and same-sex marriage, though "that doesn't mean I do not care about and want to serve everyone in the church. ... We're not talking here about condemning, rejecting or labeling people."

The Los Angeles native was ordained in 1962 and appointed to the Salt Lake City post in November 1994. Prior to that appointment, he served as a theology and English literature instructor primarily at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo.

Niederauer said Thursday he was "mistaken," when he wrote a letter to a judge in the late 1980s urging leniency for Andrew Christian Andersen, a former Orange County priest who was convicted of 26 counts of child abuse. In his letter, Niederauer said the boys might have interpreted "horse play" as molesting. The judge sentenced Andersen to five years' probation and treatment. His parole was revoked in 1990 and he was sentenced to six years in state prison, following his arrest in New Mexico for forcing a teenage boy into a car, assaulting him and trying to sodomize him. Andersen was removed from the priesthood in the mid-1990s.

"The church and I knew much less about this whole matter than we do now," Niederauer said.

Nonetheless, at least two survivors of sexual abuse by priests showed up at the news conference to meet Niederauer and give him a letter written on behalf of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests or SNAP. They asked Niederauer to confront "the unfinished business" that former Archbishop William Levada left behind.

They urged him to release the names of potentially dangerous priests, suspend accused priests and reach out to heal the survivors of sex abuse, according to the letter.

Niederauer said he's a longtime friend of Levada, who left San Francisco in August when he catapulted into the most influential Vatican post ever held by an American, the leader of the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith _ the post formerly held by the current pope.

Levada was criticized by SNAP and others who said he did a poor job dealing with the sex abuse crisis.