Pope appoints Trump critic and liberal Robert McElroy as Archbishop of Washington

Thomas Edwards• January 7, 2025

Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy, Bishop of San Diego and a vocal critic of Donald Trump, as Archbishop of Washington. 

An outspoken liberal within the Church and a close ally of Pope Francis, Cardinal McElroy will be installed as the eighth Archbishop of Washington during a Mass on March 11 at 2 p.m. at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

His appointment follows the resignation of Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the first African American cardinal, who served as Archbishop of Washington from 2019. Cardinal Gregory offered his resignation to the Pope upon turning 75, as required by canon law, on December 7, 2022.

The  appointment concludes a protracted and contentious search for a successor to the Washington archdiocese, which included a standoff between American cardinals and the apostolic nuncio, with Pope Francis initially deciding against McElroy before revisiting his candidacy after the 2024 U.S presidential election.

McElroy is viewed as a liberal and aligns closely with many priorities of Pope Francis’s pontificate, particularly regarding the plight of migrants and refugees. In 2017, during Trump’s first term, McElroy gave a speech in Modesto, California, explicitly criticising Trump and urging Catholics to become “disruptors” of the anti-immigrant agenda. 

He later told the Jesuit-run magazine America: “In the Diocese of San Diego, we have 200,000 Catholics who are undocumented. We simply can’t stand by and watch them get deported.” Most recently, at a press conference following his appointment as Archbishop of Washington, McElroy stated that mass deportations are “incompatible with Catholic doctrine”.

McElroy is also known for his liberal views regarding sexual morality and has advocated for greater inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics while criticising elements of the Church that exclude them.

In an article for America, he wrote: “It is a demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities.” In the same article, he appeared to hint at permitting those in active homosexual relationships to receive the Eucharist.

McElroy has expressed support for female ordination, telling the National Catholic Reporter, “I’m in favour of [women deacons]. My view is that women should be invited into every ministry or activity we have that’s not doctrinally precluded.” He also suggested, in contradiction to Pope Francis’s own statements, that the international synods in 2023 and 2024 would address “the question of the ordination of women to the priesthood”.

In his diocese in San Diego, McElroy, a committed environmentalist, emphasised the importance of responding to Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. He urged parishioners: “to see the call to save the earth as God speaking directly to us in the depths of our soul.”

The Archdiocese of Washington has had a chequered recent history with Cardinal Gregory having succeeded Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who resigned after the publication of a Pennsylvania grand jury investigation that criticised his handling of sexual abuse cases during his time as Bishop of Pittsburgh. 

In 2018, Archbishop Viganò, former papal nuncio to the United States, accused Wuerl of knowing about the abuse committed by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Wuerl’s predecessor in Washington.

Gregory’s appointment was widely seen as a response to the ongoing revelations of sexual abuse cover-ups in the diocese, due to his reputation for addressing such issues robustly. 

In contrast, McElroy’s record raises questions. In 2016, he received a letter from the late Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and former Benedictine monk, alleging that McCarrick had engaged in sexual misconduct and detailing cases of abuse and cover-up. McElroy later stated: “Dr. Sipe made many significant contributions to understanding the dimensions of clergy sexual abuse in the United States and to assisting victims. But the limitations on his willingness to share corroborating information made it impossible to know what was real and what was rumour.” He also cited that the letter had been given to him under false pretenses as Sipe had employed someone to pretend to be a major donor in order that it was delivered directly to McElroy.

The announcement of McElroy’s appointment comes a few weeks after Trump announced that Brian Burch, a right-wing Catholic political advocate and media figure who has often been a critical voice on Pope Francis, will serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.

In his opening remarks as archbishop-elect of Washington, Cardinal McElroy said that he and all Catholics should pray for the success of President-elect Donald Trump and his administration.

(Monsignor Robert Walter McElroy | Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP via Getty Images)