How Cardinal McElroy came to Washington
The appointment of a new U.S. ambassador triggered a last minute rethink on the cardinal's candidacy, according to officials
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.
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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.
Excellent analysis, Ed. I wonder how the good people of the Archdiocese feel knowing their Archbishop was selected based on politics and not the needs of the local community.
My husband noted that with the McElroy pick, as with many other times in Francis’ papacy, the pope has chosen to lecture Americans instead of engaging with us. I think there’s a lot of truth in that.