Cardinal McElroy Appointed to Washington, DC

A Voice for the Catholic Church in a Second Trump Term?

Pope Francis named Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Bishop of San Diego since 2015, as the new Archbishop of Washington, DC last week, replacing the retiring Wilton Gregory, who has led the Washington archdiocese since 2019. McElroy has closely aligned himself with the pastoral approach and social teaching of Pope Francis, and Francis has likewise entrusted McElroy with increasing responsibilities in the Church, including his unusual appointment as a cardinal in 2022 while still the bishop in San Diego and Francis’ appointment of McElroy as a delegate to the Synod on Synodality in 2023 and 2024. McElroy’s new assignment in the nation’s capital is especially important since he is expected to be a voice for the Church and its priorities in dialogue with the incoming Trump administration—my focus in this essay—although McElroy also faces other challenges such as the ongoing consequences of the sexual abuse committed by DC’s former archbishop, Theodore McCarrick, and looming financial problems in the archdiocese.

Many bishops have graduate degrees in theology or related fields, but few truly have the vocation of a theologian. McElroy is one of the exceptions, and perhaps he and Bishop Robert Barron of Winona, Minnesota are the most theologically erudite among the American episcopate. McElroy received his doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1986, and his dissertation was eventually published as The Search for an American Public Theology: The Contribution of John Courtney Murray in 1989 (a shorter commemoration of Murray written by McElroy in 2005 can be found here). Coincidentally, I cited McElroy’s work on Murray in my own dissertation in 2007, when McElroy was still a parish priest in San Francisco; my dissertation was published by Georgetown University Press as The Origins of War: A Catholic Perspective in 2011. McElroy also earned a PhD in political science from Stanford in 1989, with his second dissertation, Morality and American Foreign Policy: The Role of Ethics in International Affairs, published in 1992. McElroy’s background in social ethics has deeply shaped his career as a bishop and will no doubt influence how he approaches dealings with the Trump administration.

The cardinal offered some initial thoughts on the latter topic at a press conference announcing his appointment. He singled out the issue of immigration as a source of potential conflict between the new administration and the Catholic Church. Although noting that “a country has the right to control its borders,” he added that:

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.

Further insight into areas where the cardinal might emerge as a critic of the new administration can be found in an essay on the topic of nationalism penned by McElroy back in 2017, soon after Donald Trump’s first inauguration. In it, he contrasted patriotism, which is an authentic love of country, with nationalism, which becomes exclusionary and chauvinistic. He criticized “exclusionary rhetoric” that “raised the specter of imposing exclusionary government policies that target specific groups on the margins of our society,” particularly migrants and refugees. He also lamented “partisan tribalism” and political divisiveness.

In addition, pointed to three areas where nationalism poses an obstacle to working for the common good. Besides caring for migrants and refugees, these include building a global economy that works for all while lifting people out of poverty and fostering international cooperation to combat climate change and other forms of environmental destruction. The themes raised in this article continue to remain relevant eight years later.