Salvatore Cordileone, the archbishop of San Francisco who is a candidate to head America's Catholic bishops' conference, said the breakdown of the family is the most pressing issue in society.

Cordileone, 63, said family fragmentation, whether births out of wedlock or fatherless homes, creates a variety of problems, especially bad outcomes for children later in life. Cordileone is one of several candidates for president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, known as the USCCB, the assembly that oversees America’s Catholic bishops. He told the Washington Examiner that the church needs to act as “the moral conscience of society."

He said the decline of the nuclear family is the most "urgent, as well as important" problem facing the country.

Labeling it the “root of so many social ills we’re experiencing right now,” Cordileone also said family breakdown is “correlated with so many terrible outcomes for individuals and for society as a whole.”

A San Diego native who studied at the city's eponymous Catholic university, Cordileone has long been active on family-related issues in California. While the auxiliary bishop of San Diego, he was a vocal proponent of Proposition 8, the 2008 California referendum that banned gay marriage but was struck down by the courts. He was also elected last year to succeed Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput as chairman of the USCCB's Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, which has as part of its mandate the "promotion and protection of marriage and family life."

The potential USCCB president also addressed how the church should address its sexual abuse crisis. Last year's revelation that disgraced cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, faced multiple credible allegations of sexual abuse raised negative perceptions of the church in the United States. Those perceptions deteriorated further after the Vatican postponed a vote by the USCCB on new standards for holding bishops accountable.

Cordileone acknowledged the severity of the crisis, but also said that the hierarchy should pursue a more aggressive response defending the church's record in recent years.

“We need to get the facts out there,” said Cordileone, who added that the last time allegations of sexual abuse were filed in his archdiocese was in 2000. He's been the archbishop since 2012.

Cordileone said the church also needs to remind people what it has given to the world in order to counteract the conception of it as scandal-ridden.

“We’re constantly playing defense, and I think what we need to do is hold up everything the church has given to the world,” said Cordileone. “The church really built Western civilization through holding up truth, goodness, and beauty, and the church needs to continue to do that.”

In his archdiocese, Cordileone commissioned what became known as the Mass of the Americas, which brings together sounds from popular spiritual songs among Mexican Catholics with more traditional sacred music. He believes this mass helps to break down barriers between Americans and Mexicans.

“We hear a lot about walls nowadays between our two countries. There are also existential walls, and I think these kinds of experiences help to break down the existential walls,” said Cordileone.

And as for reaching out to young people, who are more secular than their forebears, the archbishop said the answer might surprise some people.

“I think for a lot of people it’s counterintuitive, but it’s tradition that the young people respond to,” said Cordileone.

The USCCB presidential and vice presidential elections will take place next month during the body's general assembly in Baltimore. Ten bishops and archbishops from across the country have been nominated as candidates for these posts. Those elected will serve three-year terms starting at the conclusion of the assembly.