Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego as the archbishop of Washington, replacing Cardinal Wilton Gregory.
In appointing the 70-year-old Cardinal McElroy, Francis placed a like-minded prelate to shepherd the faithful in the nation’s capital just two weeks before the start of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
Cardinal McElroy is known as a passionate defender of migrants, a relentless critic of division, an advocate for the Catholic LGBT cause and a champion of the pope’s vision for a synodal church.
His progressive approach has already caused tension among conservative Catholics, and his D.C. tenure is likely to be anything but calming, many frustrated parishioners said.
“The blatant corruption of Pope Francis and the US Cardinals is on full display with the appointment of a [Theodore] McCarrick clone to the same archdiocese where his evil reigned twenty years ago. All of us who love Jesus Christ and His Church must speak out against these wolves of the hierarchy. We cannot remain silent in the face of this blatant corruption,” Bishop Joseph Strickland, formerly of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, posted on X.
Bishop Strickland was referring to the defrocked former archbishop of Washington who was convicted of sexual misconduct in a canonical trial in 2019. Mr. McCarrick, who shared many of Pope Francis’ views, was succeeded in 2006 by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who stepped down in 2018 amid criticism of his handling of clergy sexual abuse cases.
Cardinal Wuerl was succeeded by Cardinal Gregory, who, at 77, is two years past the age that bishops are expected to retire.
A Harvard graduate with a doctorate in political science from Stanford University, Cardinal McElroy has emerged as a leading academic advocate for inclusion in the Catholic Church.
At a virtual press conference Monday at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, the cardinal set the stage for his tenure, laying bare his pastoral philosophy: “We are called to proclaim that everyone is welcomed on this journey, embraced in God’s love,” he said, according to The Catholic Standard.
In 2023, Cardinal McElroy described bigotry toward LGBTQ people as a “demonic mystery of the human soul” and called on the Church to embrace inclusivity rather than condemnation, in a piece featured in America Magazine.
Advocating for what he coined as “radical inclusion,” he has urged the Church to rethink its approach to LGBTQ Catholics and divorced-and-remarried members, even suggesting that the catechism’s phrase “intrinsically disordered” be removed, during an interview with the Jesuitical podcast.
In 2018, he lambasted then-President Trump’s proposed border wall: “It is a sad day for our country when we trade the majestic, hope-filled symbolism of the Statue of Liberty for an ineffective and grotesque wall, which both displays and inflames the ethnic and cultural divisions that have long been the underside of our national history.”
More conservative Catholics argue that Washington — a diocese that has struggled to find footing after sexual abuse scandals rocked its foundation — doesn’t need a theologically divisive figure at the helm.
Mistrust lingers from the McCarrick scandals. And critics note the incoming archbishop was reportedly informed of McCarrick’s sexual misdeeds in 2016 but did not take substantive action to address them.
“Even though I read the report that this was a possibility last night, I still thought this was a parody at first when I saw this as it is unbelievable that this would be allowed. Theological concerns aside, McElroy was a protege of McCarrick and has a horrible record on abuse,” one Catholic, Mason Letteau Stallings, posted on X.
One Catholic X user said the Cardinal’s installation is a direct affront to those who were abused: “One important step in taking responsibility for this ’betrayal’ is to make sure that those complicit in it — like McElroy — are not given positions of power going forward. The Church has failed us again in making McElroy a Cardinal of the DC Archdiocese.”
Another, Emily Katharine, shared her experiences during Cardinal McElroy’s tenure in San Diego, tweeting Monday that his practices in California are certain to carry over to his new post in Washington: “…while I lived in his diocese the ’recommended donation’ for baptism was over $100 & they wouldn’t schedule unless you ’paid in full.’”
From policies such as barring Catholic homeschooling groups from using parish facilities to his calls for decentralizing church governance, Cardinal McElroy has consistently spurred controversy in his past appointments.
And the cardinal’s statements have seen him even moving beyond the Pope in his desire for debate on issues such as sacramental ordination for women, a matter the pontiff himself has declared settled.
Ordained in 1980 for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, he served as secretary to Archbishop John Quinn before becoming vicar general. Later, he rose to the rank of auxiliary bishop in 2010, then Bishop of San Diego in 2015, before finally being elevated to the status of cardinal by Pope Francis in 2022.
“McElroy was always destined to leave San Diego for a more influential diocese,” Crisis Magazine editor-in-chief Eric Sammons wrote in an op-ed Monday. “The very fact that the bishop of a suffragan diocese was made a Cardinal — while being under a metropolitan archbishop [Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez] who wasn’t himself a Cardinal — was unprecedented. He was clearly being groomed for greater pastures.”
Cardinal McElroy will be formally installed in March, with Cardinal Gregory serving as apostolic administrator in the interim.
• Emma Ayers can be reached at eayers@washingtontimes.com.