Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony has asked county supervisors to reconsider their decision to remove a tiny cross from the county seal. He said the image reflected the importance of Catholic missions in the county's early history.
Supervisors decided last week to replace the cross with another image after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue.
The ACLU said a cross on the official government seal was an "impermissible endorsement of Christianity" and violated the First Amendment, which guarantees the separation of church and state.
In his letter to the supervisors, Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, wrote that removing the cross would "deny the historical record."
"It would not make any more sense than deleting the Mayflower because of its Puritan passengers, the figure Jedediah Smith because of his Mormon belief or the Star of David because of its relationship to Judaism," the cardinal wrote.
Other images on the 47-year-old seal include a cow, a tuna, a Spanish galleon, the Hollywood Bowl and the goddess Pomona cradling an armful of fruit.