The installation of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the eighth Archbishop of Washington went off with a bang on Tuesday.
The basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was full, and the entrance processional snaked around the nave, as thousands of Catholics and hundreds of clerics from across the country arrived in fleets of buses to see the cardinal take possession of the capital see.
While episcopal installations in Washington tend to draw a full house, McElroy’s arrival was especially well attended — more than 80 bishops, archbishops, and cardinals concelebrated. Dozens more came Tuesday than the last time such an event was held, when Cardinal Wilton Gregory was installed in 2019.
The crowd was about as catholic a representation as could be imagined, with bishops visible from nearly every state between McElroy’s previous posting in California and D.C. It’s a rare event that brings together bishops from New Mexico, Washington state, Illinois, and New York — indeed the March 11 liturgy felt better attended than many sessions of USCCB plenary meetings.
And it was clear that the bishops were happy to be there, the smiles were everywhere and evidently sincere; Cardinal Timothy Dolan affectionately bear-hugged Cardinal Blase Cupich in the processional line.
Given the tensions and divisions which so visibly split the conference in recent years — and in which Cardinal McElroy was often a visible figure — there was an almost ecumenical air to the occasion.
When McElroy was announced as the next Washington archbishop in January, many worried he could prove a divisive figure. Instead, on today’s showing at least, he has emerged as a perhaps unlikely point of unity among the bishops.
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By itself, there is nothing unusual about a major archiepiscopal installation drawing a big crowd, perhaps even more so in Washington, given its place on the national stage.
But by any metric, including compared to the historic inauguration of D.C.’s first Black archbishop six years ago, Cardinal McElroy’s brother bishops turned out in force, and from all corners of what are often considered to be the ideological spectrum of the conference.
Attendance might well have been buoyed by the installation’s overlap with a meeting of the USCCB’s administrative committee in Washington this week. But nevertheless, it was only two years ago that the bishops were arguing angrily and publicly over the theology of the Eucharist.
In February 2023, Cardinal McElroy wrote that the Church should discard “a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist.”
“Unworthiness cannot be the prism of accompaniment for disciples of the God of grace and mercy,” the cardinal said in an essay.
In response, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield warned that clarifying doctrinal errors proffered by senior Church leaders is a “necessary” responsibility for bishops, and that failing to address errors in Catholic teaching would see them compounded.
While Paprocki stressed in comments to The Pillar at the time that he was not offering a particular or personal assessment of any single bishop or cardinal, he noted that he “would certainly welcome those kinds of conversations with Cardinal McElroy or any other bishop.”
With that kind of recent history, Paprocki’s own attendance at McElroy’s installation on Tuesday was a silent statement which might be seen to speak volumes about how far the bishops have come, and how quickly, towards forming a visibly more united front.
Part of the groundwork for this renewed sense of conference collegiality likely comes, in part, from the bishops choosing to change how they speak and relate to each other. One of the more notable changes to come out of the 2023 “Eucharistic coherence” debates was a shift for much more of the business at USCCB meetings to be conducted behind closed doors.
Since then, bishops have routinely spoken about a renewed sense of fraternity, and how they have found it easier to be charitably frank with each, having moved their conversations behind closed doors. And, with very few exceptions, there has been a general undertaking to keep their conversations confidential, even while they discuss potentially divisive issues like reforms to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
Of course, this renewed sense of collegiality didn’t erase entirely different viewpoints among the bishops, nor did signal an end to sometimes contentious discussions about episcopal appointments, both in the U.S. and in Rome. Indeed, lengthy delays in major appointments often found McElroy’s name mixed up the process — though by no means always at his own instigation.
Even as recently as this year, when his choice for Washington was announced, McElroy’s appointment was reportedly the result of a closely contested back-and-forth process, drawing in voices from multiple U.S. cardinals.
Yet if McElroy’s unveiling for Washington was reportedly a pointed papal response to political developments following the November election, it may be that those same secular politics have helped rally the bishops behind the cardinal.
Since Inauguration Day in January, the Trump administration has staked out a number of positions at odds with Church authorities, both in rhetorical terms and on the substance of policy.
At the same time, Catholic Vice President JD Vance publicly accused the bishops of taking on refugee work to “pad their bottom line” despite the conference spending more annually on such programs than it received in government funds for doing so.
The adoption by the Trump administration of a strident posture towards the USCCB and Catholic Charities — characterized as overtly hostile by some observers — has provoked near-universal criticism from bishops, who have both sought to defend the Church’s charitable works and accommodate deep cuts to staff following the cancellation of contracts.
Any of these circumstances would probably be enough to cause a renewed sense of solidarity among the bishops, but the situation health of Pope Francis has likely made the episcopal instinct to pull together even stronger.
Last month the pope issued a letter to all the American bishops, praising them for their principled stand and “valuable efforts” in working with refugees and migrants in the face of “the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations.”
Just days later, the pope was taken to hospital, where he has faced several moments of critical risk to his life, and where he remains making slow progress towards recovery, providing the U.S. bishops, together with all Catholics, with another point of urgent unity as they pray for his recovery — with Cardinal McElroy leading them in a recitation of a rosary decade for Francis’ intentions at the end of Mass on Tuesday.
When McElroy was named to take over the Washington archdiocese in January, his appointment was widely perceived as a contentious, potentially divisive choice, one which could limit cooperation with the Trump administration and even prove controversial among his brother bishops.
Instead, by the time of his installation Tuesday afternoon, he seems to have emerged as an unlikely point of unity among the bishops as they rally behind an infirm pontiff and in the face of a hostile presidential administration.
How long it will last — or whether the bishops will for very long value affective collegiality over their divided positions on pressing and critical issues — remains to be seen. But on Tuesday, in their national basilica, they were all smiles and bear hugs.
