Pope risks exposing Church skeletons by standing up to ‘populist’ tide

Charles Collins/Crux• January 8, 2025

After the re-election of Donald Trump, pundits speculated on how Pope Francis would react this time round to a US president known to oppose the pontiff’s views on immigration and various conflicts happening in the world.

For many, this question was soon answered by the recent appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the new Archbishop of Washington, DC. McElory, who has served as the Bishop of San Diego since 2015, is one of the leading members of the liberal wing of the Catholic Church in the United States, who has often opposed Trump’s policies on immigration, while supporting LGBT-related issues in the Church.

Trump has said he would deport unregistered immigrants. He has also promised to ask Congress to establish that only two genders will be federally recognised, a move that is opposed by those supporting so-called “transgender affirmation”.

Given all that, the appointment of McElroy to the Washington archdiocese was a surprise to many, who had thought Pope Francis might make a more conciliatory pick for the role, given Trump’s large win in November 2024.

The cardinal, while he wasn’t immediately combative towards the soon-to-be President, nonetheless laid down markers of possible resistance following his appointment.

“The Catholic Church teaches that a country has the right to control its borders, and our nation’s desire to do that is a legitimate effort,” McElroy said in response to a question from Crux.

“At the same time, we are called always to have a sense of the dignity of every human person, and thus plans which have been talked about at some levels of having a wider, indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” he said.

The leanings of the new head of the Washington archdiocese have not gone unnoticed by Catholic commentators.

“Cardinal McElroy has a brilliant mind, a pastor’s heart, and a prophetic gut. A perfect appointment in the Trump era: the Gospel sine glossa to counteract the perversion of Christian nationalism,” papal biographer Austen Ivereigh, and a noted liberal Catholic, wrote on X.

Meanwhile, conservative Catholic commentator Philip Lawler commented on X that there were two “predictable consequences” of the McElroy appointment to the Washington archdiocese.

“1) He will be a prominent critic of the Trump administration. 2) He will be critici[s]ed himself in turn, because of his ties to ‘Uncle Ted’ McCarrick.”

Lawler was referring to accusations that McElroy covered up abuse charges against ex-Cardinal and ex-priest Theodore McCarrick.

Lawler then added: “[McElroys] criticism of the White House may or may not damage Trump. But the criticism of McElroy will undoubtedly damage the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy. So his appointment tells you something about the current priorities of Vatican leadership.”

Lawler has a point, in that there are two major issues facing Francis’s pontificate as 2025 begins and Trump’s 20 January inauguration gets ever closer.

First is Francis’s concerns over the rise of right-wing populists in the world’s democracies.

In 2023, he accused the US Church of having a “a very strong, organised, reactionary attitude.”

Speaking in Trieste last year, the Pope said democracy “is not in good health in the world today”, adding people must “develop a critical sense regarding ideological and populist temptations”.

He said this as conservatives gained more power across the West, building on successes by the likes of conservative figures such as Viktor Orban in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni leading Italy.

Even the Labour Party’s win in the UK doesn’t seem to represent a rise of British liberalism. The party’s win came as the Conservative party was accused of not being “conservative enough”, while Labour’s popularity is quickly dropping in the polls.

Shortly before Francis appointed McElory to Washington, Canada’s long-serving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was stepping down, in the hope of preventing the expected win of the country’s conservatives in October’s federal national elections.

Yet McElroy’s appointment also points to the other issue facing Francis’s final years: the seemingly never-ending abuse crisis in the Church.

For the cardinal is accused of not properly addressing accusations given to him from clerical sex abuse expert Richard Sipe in 2016. (Sipe died in 2018.)

The Pope himself has long been dogged by accusations he tends to side with the protests of innocence from clergy over the accusations made from the victims.

Francis took the word of Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, Argentinian Bishop Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick over the objections of their victims, before reversing course after public outrage.

Since the 1950s, conservative politicians in the West have generally been respectful towards the Vatican, often fearful of losing Catholic votes.

But the new populist leaders – who often have strong support from Mass-going Catholics – are less likely to fear offending the Church leadership by bringing up the Vatican’s own skeletons in the closet if they feel attacked by the Pope.

Photo: Pope Francis celebrates the Holy Mass of the Epiphany in St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Vatican City State, 6 January 2025. (Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images.)