How Cardinal McElroy came to Washington
January 8, 2025
Cardinal Robert
McElroy
The Holy See announced Monday Cardinal Robert McElroy as the
next Archbishop of Washington, bringing to an end months of speculation about
the appointment and a contentious behind the scenes process to name a successor
for Cardinal Wilton Gregory.
While McElroy was long known to be the preferred candidate
of some senior American prelates, most notably Cardinal Blase Cupich of
Chicago, Pope Francis supposedly made a firm decision against the Californian
native as recently as October.
So how did McElroy end up getting the capital city see, and
what does his appointment say about the ecclesiastical-political landscape in
America and Rome?
For some time, it has been widely known in episcopal circles
that Washington’s now-outgoing archbishop, the 77-year old Cardinal Wilton
Gregory, hoped to retire, having served since he was appointed in 2019, after
the pope reluctantly accepted Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s resignation in the
fallout of the McCarrick scandal.
The Archdiocese of Washington is always one of the most
sensitive appointments in the U.S. Church. While it may not have the size of
New York or Chicago, or the historical cultural significance of Boston, its
proximity to political power puts it center of the national ecclesiastical
stage.
Finding a successor to Gregory was, by all accounts, never
going to be straightforward or easy, with deadlock on major U.S. episcopal
appointments becoming the new normal — currently eight archbishops are over the
age of 75, with a further five set to reach the canonical age for submitting
their resignations within the next year.
However, according to multiple sources close to the appointment
process in the U.S. and Rome, the situation was made even more complicated, and
sensitive, after the U.S. bishops’ conference split publicly and acrimoniously
over the Biden presidency, beginning on his inauguration day and stretching
through the debate over “Eucharistic coherence.”
Sources close to the Dicastery for Bishops have for months
told The Pillar of conflicting recommendations and agendas
between the dicastery’s American members, Cardinals Blase Cupich and Joseph
Tobin of Newark, and the apostolic nuncio to the United States, Cardinal
Christophe Pierre.
In the process for Washington, a similar deadlock formed,
with sources close to both the Dicastery for Bishops and the Secretariat of
State telling The Pillar that there was again no agreement
between the nuncio, whose office is meant to vet and recommend candidates for
appointment to the dicastery, and the American members of the dicastery.
“[Cardinal] Cupich was firm in his backing of McElroy,” one
senior official told The Pillar, “and the nuncio was equally
clearly against him.” The official said that Cardinal Pierre believed McElroy
would be a “polarizing” choice for the D.C. job, as he is considered a
controversial figure among his brother bishops and vocal on political issues.
Age was another factor in the nuncio’s objections to
McElroy, one official close to the process said. “[McElroy] is 70, 71 in February,
that’s as old as Gregory was when he was appointed,” the official observed.
“Finding a suitable candidate for Washington is a headache
at the best of times, a nightmare these days,” he said. “No one wants to have
to go through this all again in a few years, and the nuncio argued for someone
younger, someone who would bring some stability.”
Another official confirmed Pierre’s apparent concerns about
McElroy, and said that in the wake of the U.S. election results, the
Secretariat of State itself was eager for a “non-confrontational” approach to
the incoming Trump administration.
The last time Trump was in office, American foreign policy
officials, most notably then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, publicly clashed
with the Vatican on diplomatic matters, especially the Vatican’s controversial
2018 pastoral agreement with China on the appointment of bishops and the
government crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong.
However, with ending the war in Ukraine a key diplomatic aim
for Pope Francis and a stated goal of the incoming Trump administration, the
Vatican’s Secretariat of State was looking for potentially constructive
engagement, officials told The Pillar.
“Working for peace is the absolute priority for the Holy
Father,” one official said. “If there could be cooperation there [in Ukraine]
or in the Holy Land, that must be a priority.”
Multiple sources told The Pillar that
following a publicized October audience with Pope Francis for Cardinals Cupich,
Tobin, and McElroy during the synod on synodality, at which the Washington
appointment was discussed, Francis resolved against moving the San Diego bishop
to Washington.
However, the same sources all said that, despite the
concerns of the Secretariat of State and the nuncio in Washington, and Francis’
apparent resolve to appoint someone else, no strong alternative was put
forward.
“[Cardinal Pierre] had some options, of course,” said one
Vatican official familiar with the process, “but no one he seemed totally
committed to.”
The Pillar has previously reported that
Archbishop Shelton Fabre of Louisville had emerged as a potential candidate for
Washington. Asked about consideration of Fabre for the role, the same official
said the archbishop made “good sense on paper” but that he lacked an
enthusiastic advocate in discussions.
“Maybe he was the perfect candidate,” said the official,
“but he was only ever an option among many. The nuncio certainly didn’t press
him forward like others pressed for McElroy.”
The absence of a clear alternative led Pope Francis to task
former Washington archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl with identifying a suitable
option. Wuerl, as The Pillar has previously reported,
identified Jefferson City’s Bishop Shawn McKnight, with Cardinal Gregory also
signing off on the recommendation.
However, sources at the Secretariat of State told The
Pillar that although McElroy had been initially ruled out in part out
because he could be seen as a provocative choice by the incoming
administration, it was diplomatic events which brought him back into the
conversation.
On December 20, Donald Trump announced his selection of
Brian Burch to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Burch, president of
the political advocacy group CatholicVote, had been a strident supporter of
Trump’s campaign. However, he and his organization have also been occasionally
sharp critics of the Vatican and of Pope Francis and especially critical of the
Catholic Church’s relief work on the U.S. southern border.
One source close to the Secretariat of State told The
Pillar that the announcement of Burch as incoming ambassador “reopened
the whole conversation.”
“It was considered settled [in favor of McKnight], ready to
make the call, and then it suddenly wasn’t.”
The official said that the appointment of Burch was
perceived at the Secretariat of State as “aggressive” and “undiplomatic.”
“It ended expectations for a kind of ‘new beginning,’” he
said. At the same time, sources close to the process told The Pillar,
Cardinal Cupich privately represented the nomination as antagonistic towards
Pope Francis personally, requiring an appointment for Washington in response.
The result was Pope Francis reversing his previous decision
and opting for McElroy, The Pillar was told.
—
Whatever the concerns about McElroy’s candidacy prior to his
appointment, and whatever the reasons for his eventual selection to serve as Archbishop
of Washington, what kind of tone he will choose to strike in office remains to
be seen.
At his formal presentation as the incoming archbishop on
Monday, Cardinal McElroy made clear that he is not setting out to be
antagonistic to the administration in his new role.
Citing the need to “create a greater unity in our society in
the political-cultural sphere,” the cardinal said that “all of us as Americans
should hope and pray that our government is successful in helping to enhance
our society and our culture and our life for the whole of our nation.”
“I pray that President Trump’s administration, and all of
those state and local legislators and governors across the whole of our
country, will work together to make our nation truly better.”
The cardinal also highlighted immigration as a “large issue”
of likely “contrast” with the incoming administration. Acknowledging the
“right” and “legitimate effort” of the U.S. government to control its borders,
the cardinal noted that “we are called always to have a sense of the dignity of
every human person” and reiterated concerns expressed by many U.S. bishops,
including the USCCB’s leadership, of proposed "indiscriminate and mass
deportation” policies.
“We’ll have to see what emerges,” McElroy said.
How strident a critic the new archbishop chooses to become
of the government remains to be seen, and will surely be shaped by Trump’s
policy choices and their implementation. But, as a first outing, and as a
statement of intent, the cardinal’s remarks Monday put him squarely in line
with the majority of the U.S. episcopate — he pointedly included reference to
“the unborn” first in a brief litany of those the Church is called to defend as
advocate for.
More locally, many Washington Catholics expressed immediate
concern about what his pastoral priorities for the archdiocese could be. The
archdiocese is home to sizable liturgically traditionalist communities and a
number of homeschooling families — both issues to which McElroy is often seen
as unsympathetic.
McElroy himself stressed Monday that he had no specific
plans for Washington, and that his first concern was to get to know the
“diverse” character of the archdiocese.
The cardinal was initially ruled out of the running for the
office he now occupies, principally because he was considered a potentially
divisive and polemic choice. Time will tell if he confirms or confounds those
reservations, among his new people, along with his brother bishops, and with
the incoming presidential administration.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/how-cardinal-mcelroy-came-to-washington
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