WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
January 6, 2025
By Michelle Boorstein, Anthony Faiola and Stefano Pitrelli
McElroy, known for a pastoral approach to migrants and the LGBTQ+ community, will lead an archdiocese still bruised by a sexual abuse and mismanagement scandal.
The Vatican named one of the United States’ leading liberal Catholic prelates Monday to run the prominent D.C.-area archdiocese, sending to the nation’s capital as a second Trump administration begins a cleric known for a pastoral approach to migrants and for the “radical inclusion” of the LGBTQ+ community.
San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy, who has led a diocese that runs the length of California’s southern border with Mexico for a decade, will take over an archdiocese still bruised by a major sexual abuse and mismanagement scandal that broke in 2018.
McElroy, who holds a political science doctorate from Stanford University, is considered by some Catholics to be a leading intellectual closely aligned with Pope Francis — and, by others, too direct at times on secular politics. Just after Donald Trump’s first presidential inauguration in 2017, McElroy said “we must all become disrupters,” citing the use of the military to deport undocumented people and the portrayal of refugees as enemies and Muslims “as forces of fear rather than as children of God.”
“Given the fact that the president-elect has indicated a willingness to challenge certain constitutional assumptions, there’s only one bishop in America who has thought deeply about the intersection of public life and Catholic theology, and that’s Bob McElroy,” said Michael Sean Winters, a longtime columnist for the National Catholic Reporter news site. “The pope is sending to the capital city the one American bishop who has a profound understanding and has thought about the American Constitution and religion for his entire adult life.”
The Washington Post reported McElroy’s appointment on Sunday based on several people informed of the decision by Catholic officials in Washington and Rome. The Vatican officially announced his appointment Monday, with a news conference set for 10 a.m. Washington time. The people who confirmed McElroy’s appointment to The Post spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the Vatican’s pending announcement.
The 70-year-old McElroy will replace Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the first African American cardinal whose long career inside the church includes overseeing the landmark Dallas Charter. After the Catholic sexual abuse scandals erupted publicly in the early 2000s, that agreement established zero tolerance for priests.
At 77, Gregory is two years past the standard retirement age for bishops. The Vatican said on Monday that Gregory’s resignation had been tendered and officially accepted.
He was brought to the archdiocese, which includes D.C. and suburban and rural parts of Southern Maryland, in 2019. He was seen as a church loyalist and steady moderate who could restore trust after the crisis wrought by former D.C. archbishop and former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
McCarrick, once one of the most popular and influential U.S. Catholic leaders, was expelled from the priesthood by Francis after multiple men said he sexually abused them as youths or harassed them as seminarians or young priests. McCarrick was also charged in Massachusetts with fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, but the case was suspended after experts found him not mentally competent to stand trial.
By naming McElroy, who is already a cardinal, Francis is able to sidestep the promotion of another American bishop into the elite college that will vote on the next pope — a decision in line with what observers view as the pontiff’s belief that there are already too many cardinals from major cities in influential Western nations.
McElroy is also seen as formidable theologian and liberal lion who has fiercely defended Francis in the wake of open attacks by traditionalists. He is equally viewed as a promulgator of unity who has denounced “a profound sickness in the soul in American political life” and sought to defend the country’s “core democratic consensus.”
“People are coming toward each other in the life of the Church looking first at that label: What are you? Where do you stand in the warlike culture politics of our country?” McElroy said during a panel last May and while warning against confrontational politics.
McElroy’s strong defense of migrant rights may rub up against the incoming Trump administration, and serves in some ways as a counterpoint to the Trump’s decision to name Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote and a papal critic, as the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. It is no coincidence, some observers say, that the decision was announced ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
“McElroy’s nomination is a very clear message,” said Massimo Faggioli, a Catholic theologian at Villanova University. It “is a high-profile response to the [current] political situation in America, there is no denying it.”
McElroy, however, has also taken Biden to task, criticizing him in 2021 for not pursuing laws against abortion. Yet he has also said it is wrong for bishops to create one-issue litmus tests, echoing Francis’s call for constructive dialogue.
“We have a Pope who has placed encounter, dialogue, honesty and collaboration at the heart of his approach to public conversation … we have a nation in need of healing and that should be the focus of our way forward” McElroy said at Georgetown in 2021.
Some experts, however, said the cardinal may have limited influence on the national debate.
“The bottom line is that despite the significant emblematic statement of the appointment, McElroy’s real practice influence over Trump’s policies will be minimal,” said Alejandro Bermudez, former head of the large Spanish-language Catholic news agency ACI-Prensa, and former head of the conservative Catholic News Agency. “The U.S. government, both at the legislative and executive level, see the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, not the Archdiocese of Washington,” as its counterpart.
San Diego, like the Washington area, is a politically diverse diocese, and some Catholic leaders said Sunday that McElroy has a record of speaking out on public issues — but not in a partisan way.
“The archbishop of the nation’s capital has the opportunity to bring Catholic principles to national conversations in a way that few others can, whether it’s about caring for the poor and vulnerable, respecting human life and dignity or standing with immigrants and workers,” said Kim Daniels, an adviser to both the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Daniels called McElroy an “outstanding choice both as a pastor and as a leader in public life.”
He “takes to heart Pope Francis’s call to accompany people with mercy in the concrete particulars of their lives,” she said. “In politics, he’ll offer a smart and distinctive Catholic voice, with a record of putting the poor and vulnerable first while seeking opportunities for dialogue and engagement.”
The Archdiocese of Washington has a multimillion-dollar annual operating deficit, according to the Catholic news site the Pillar. It reported last month that Gregory “announced a sweeping reform” of how it assesses the incomes of parishes and what can be taxed by the diocese.
Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, a Catholic school in Northeast D.C., praised Gregory’s pastoral nature but said the McCarrick scandal had pushed some “faithful Catholics” out of the church forever and left those who remain more skeptical.
She said a new leader would need first and foremost to be savvy about communicating what the Catholic Church teaches.
“Especially in a Trump administration,” McGuire added. “Trump poses challenges for all of us. He claims to be pro-life, but he’s not. We need all bishops to call that out.” Moreover, “the immigration issues are huge in terms of the dignity of human life.”
McElroy, a fifth-generation San Franciscan by birth, has said he felt called to the priesthood as a boy. According to a bio on the diocese’s website, he went to seminary in high school but “was still committed to seeking a life in the priesthood” and thought it was best to further his education outside the church. He attended Harvard University and graduated in three years with a degree in U.S. history. He then went to Stanford, where he got a master’s in U.S. history and the doctorate in political science.
He has been one of the more active U.S. bishops on hosting and supporting “synods,” information-gathering sessions where all Catholics are supposed to enter into dialogue. In 2023, he made news when he wrote in America magazine that the pope has called Catholics to “radical inclusion” — and that one way the church needs to change in response to that call is to allow more worshipers to take Communion.
Catholic tradition says people who have sex outside heterosexual marriage are in a state of grave sin and thus can’t receive Communion. McElroy said the church needs to rethink this emphasis on sexual activity.
“The effect of the tradition that all sexual acts outside of marriage constitute objectively grave sin has been to focus the Christian moral life disproportionately upon sexual activity,” he wrote. Sexual activity, “while profound,” isn’t the heart of Christian truths. “This should change.”
McElroy’s selection places him in the nation’s capital just as Trump is moving back into the White House and has promised sweeping detentions of undocumented migrants.
“Clearly, as the bishop of San Diego, [McElroy] is very familiar with the whole migrant and border issues, and these are going to be at the top of the agenda of the Trump administration, so these would be major concerns of his that might conflict with where Trump wants to take America,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, senior analyst at Religion News Service.
“I can’t think of a better candidate for the job in the nation’s capital,” Reese said. “He is bright, articulate and clearly a big supporter of Francis and supports his concerns that the church should be on the side of the poor and the marginalized.”