Confirmed: Cardinal McElroy to be appointed Washington archbishop

The appointment follows a lengthy and contentious process to find a successor for the Washington archdiocese

Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego will be announced as the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., The Pillar has confirmed.

Cardinal Robert Walter McElroy

After reporting January 4 that multiple U.S. bishops had said that the appointment was imminent, The Pillar has separately confirmed that Pope Francis has selected McElroy to succeed Cardinal Wilton Gregory in the capital see.

The announcement is expected Monday, according to sources close to the process.

McElroy’s appointment follows a lengthy and contentious process to find a successor for the Washington archdiocese, which involved a protracted standoff between some American cardinals and the apostolic nunciature.

The Pillar has previously reported that following a meeting in October in which McElroy joined Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago and Joseph Tobin of Newark to meet with Pope Francis during the synod on synodality in October, Francis was said to have decided against appointing McElroy.

Instead, Francis tasked former Washington archbishop Cardinal Donald Wuerl to identify a suitable candidate.

Wuerl, sources close to the process have confirmed to The Pillar, suggested Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, with Cardinal Gregory also signing off on the recommendation. However, in the weeks following the presidential election result, which saw Donald Trump reelected to the White House, Francis agreed to revisit McElroy’s candidacy.

As Bishop of San Diego and as a cardinal, McElroy has been outspoken on various subjects touching the political area, most especially immigration.

In addition to the political sensitivities of the role, McElroy will also assume leadership of more than half a million Catholics in the DC area and southern Maryland, becoming their third archbishop since 2018.

McElroy turns 71 in February and succeeds Cardinal Gregory, 77, who was appointed to succeed Cardinal Donald Wuerl in 2019, whose resignation was accepted by Pope Francis following the scandal surrounding Wuerl’s own predecessor, Theodore McCarrick, the previous year.

Despite promises of transparency by Gregory at the time of his appointment, the archdiocese has so far declined to answer repeated questions about McCarrick’s tenure, especially money raised and spent via his personal “archbishop’s fund” during his time in Washington.

McElroy has himself faced questions about McCarrick in the past, with some expressing concerns about how he responded to a 2016 warning about the now-laicized former cardinal.

In addition to lingering questions about McCarrick, McElroy will also have to reckon with a process of financial restructuring in the Washington archdiocese.

In December last year, several local priests told The Pillar that chancery officials had painted a bleak picture of archdiocesan finances, announcing sweeping reforms of its parish assessment system to bridge a multi-million dollar deficit.

As Bishop of San Diego, McElroy has at times raised eyebrows on the national stage, calling for the synod on synodality to debate issues like the sacramental ordination of women, despite Pope Francis repeatedly saying such issues were not up for discussion.

The cardinal has previously made calls for “comprehensive inclusion” in Eucharistic reception.

Following the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2023 instruction Fiducia supplicans on the blessing of persons on same-sex relationships, which Rome agreed to allow the bishops of Africa to not implement in their own dioceses, McElroy hailed the “diverging pastoral paths” taken by the Church in different countries as a model of healthy decentralization, rather than a sign of contradiction within the Church.

Last year, McElroy issued a controversial homeschooling policy in the San Diego diocese, barring local Catholic home schooling groups from using parish facilities.

Cardinal Robert McElroy presides at a liturgy during the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. Credit: RECongress/YouTube.

Cardinal McElroy was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1980, serving as secretary to Archbishop John Quinn. After several years in parish ministry, Quinn named him vicar general of the archdiocese in 1995.

McElroy was named auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 2010, and made Bishop of San Diego in 2015. Pope Francis created him a cardinal in 2022.