Pope names like-minded ally Cardinal McElroy as Washington archbishop
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego as the archbishop of Washington, tapping one of his most progressively like-minded allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of Donald Trump’s second administration.
At a press conference, McElroy said he prayed the incoming administration would work to make America a better place. But he also identified Trump’s threats of mass deportations of immigrants as a point of potential conflict, saying such policies were “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
McElroy, 70, replaces the retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who steps down after having navigated the archdiocese through the fallout of the 2018 eruption of the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The Vatican announced McElroy’s new job on Monday, the Catholic feast of the Epiphany, in a bulletin that flagged another important appointment in Francis’ reform agenda. The pope named Italian Sister Simona Brambilla the first-ever woman to head a Vatican dicastery, in this case the one responsible for religious orders.
Francis, who was elected pope on a mandate of reform, has long had his eye on McElroy, making him bishop of San Diego in 2015 and then elevating him as a cardinal in 2022.
McElroy has been one of a minority of U.S. bishops to harshly criticize the campaign to exclude Catholic politicians who support abortion rights from Communion, a campaign Francis has publicly criticized by insisting that bishops must be pastors, not politicians.
He has also questioned why the U.S. bishops’ conference, which has leaned conservative in its leadership, consistently insists on identifying abortion as its “preeminent” priority. McElroy has questioned why greater prominence is not given to issues such as racism, poverty, immigration and climate change.
He has also expressed support for LGBTQ+ youth and denounced the bullying often directed at them, further aligning himself with Francis’ priorities as pope.
“McElroy is competent, kind, empathetic, and willing to fight on the side of the vulnerable,” said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chairperson of the religion and philosophy department at Manhattan University. She said his nomination was particularly timely given the polarization in the U.S.
“McElroy has experience leading a diocese marked by diversity and challenges, and I can’t think of a bigger challenge than to be so close to the seat of the U.S. government in 2025,” she said in an email.
McElroy, a graduate of Harvard University with a master’s in history from Stanford University, is a native of San Francisco and had ministered there until Francis moved him to San Diego.
Vincent Miller, professor of theology at the University of Dayton, pointed to McElroy’s writings on Christian nationalism and patriotism — in which he argued for a “morally sound and unitive” patriotism as opposed to an isolationist one — as particularly relevant today.
“McElroy is uniquely prepared for this moment,” Miller said in a social media post. “At a moment when constitutional democracy is in crisis in the US, on the anniversary of an insurrection that sought to undermine it, Francis has moved one of his most capable and uniquely qualified bishops into position to respond to the needs of this moment.”
McElroy’s appointment to Washington comes just a few weeks after Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, nominated Brian Burch as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Burch, president and co-founder of the advocacy group CatholicVote, has criticized Francis and some of his policies, including his emphasis on “synodality” or making the church a more inclusive place.
McElroy, who was a papal nominee to the Vatican’s big synod process, made clear Monday that he was fully on board with Francis’ vision of a church that doesn’t discriminate. Speaking in Spanish to address Washington’s sizeable Latino community, McElroy cited Francis’ famous line “todos, todos, todos,” to emphasize that everyone is welcome in the church, no one excluded.
He did, though, acknowledge likely points of disagreement with the incoming Trump administration. Climate change, he said, was “one of the greatest challenges” facing the world, while immigration would likely be a source of conflict if the administration fulfills its threat of mass deportations of migrants.
“The Catholic Church teaches that a country has the right to control the borders, and our nation’s desire to do that is a legitimate effort,” he said. “At the same time, we are called always to have the sense of the dignity of every human person, and thus plans which have been talked about on some level of having a wider indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
The Archdiocese of Washington includes the District of Columbia and the Maryland counties of Montgomery, Prince George’s, St. Mary’s, Calvert and Charles. It has a total population of 3,050,847, of whom 671,187 are Catholic.
Its outgoing archbishop, Gregory, took over in 2019 at a time of turmoil for one of the nation’s most important archdioceses. Its two previous leaders, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Cardinal Donald Wuerl, were caught up in a new wave of the long-running clerical sexual abuse scandal.
Wuerl stepped down after he lost the trust of his priests, and McCarrick was defrocked after a Vatican investigation found he abused adults as well as minors.
Francis not only tapped Gregory to lead but then made him a prince of the church in 2020, making him the first Black American cardinal in the process.
McElroy was indirectly tainted by the McCarrick scandal after revelations that a whistleblower had told him in 2016 that McCarrick slept with seminarians. McElroy acknowledged having received the report but said the whistleblower refused to provide him with corroborating evidence.
Bishop Joseph Strickland, an arch-conservative whom Francis ousted as bishop of Tyler, Texas last year, cited the McCarrick connection in strongly criticizing Monday’s appointment.
“The blatant corruption of Pope Francis and the US Cardinals is on full display with the appointment of a McCarrick clone to the same archdiocese where his evil reigned twenty years ago,” Strickland tweeted.
The Archdiocese of Washington is home to The Catholic University of America, which is run by the church and is viewed as more conservative than many other Catholic universities in the U.S. run by the Jesuits.
The dean of CUA’s school of theology and religious studies, Professor Joseph Capizzi, said he looked forward to working with McElroy.
“I hope he becomes engaged,” Capizzi said. “I hope we can influence him and he can influence us.”
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David Crary contributed from New York.
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By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
