Think Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom are the only ones looking to hamstring and “Trump-proof” the incoming Trump administration?
It looks like Pope Francis has decided to get in on that act, too.
According to the Catholic Standard:
Pope Francis on Jan. 6, 2025 named Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of San Diego, as the new archbishop of Washington. As the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal McElroy succeeds Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who has served in that role since 2019. On Jan. 6, Pope Francis also accepted the resignation of Cardinal Gregory as the archbishop of Washington. As required by Church law, Cardinal Gregory had submitted his resignation to the pope two years ago after he turned 75 on Dec. 7, 2022.
The appointment and resignation were announced in Washington, D.C., by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. The date of the installation for Cardinal McElroy as the eighth archbishop of Washington has not yet been set. Until his installation, Cardinal McElroy is the archbishop-elect of Washington, and Cardinal Gregory, who is now 77, will serve as the apostolic administrator of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which includes 655,000 Catholics, 140 parishes and 90 Catholic schools located in Washington, D.C., and the five Maryland counties of Calvert, Charles, Montgomery, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s.
Why would he do that? Did Trump’s popularity with Catholic voters have something to do with it? Was Trump’s decision to have New York’s Cardinal Dolan lead the prayer at his inauguration on Jan. 20 his trigger?
I don’t know. But according to The Pillar, a website of Catholic affairs news, it happened like this:
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.
So it definitely came about because of President Trump’s victory, as the passage reads, a long period of battling-bishop contention, until reality set in that Trump was taking the White House.
This, despite Pope Francis advising Catholics to vote their consciences (which they did), since he, supposedly, didn’t take political sides.
A tweet from the pope’s official biographer, who is close to him, suggests that, actually, the pope did take sides:
Did the pope put a notable pro-lifer in that slot so close to the White House, the press corps, the bully pulpit to the country, when Joe Biden took office, and got busy jailing pro-lifers, letting churches burn, siccing the FBI on Latin Mass enthusiasts, prosecuting the Little Sisters of the Poor for not wanting to buy abortion insurance, bankrolling and promoting abortion around the world, shoveling untold cash to Planned Parenthood, and trying to halt conscience exceptions for medical personnel who did not want to perform the grisly act of abortion; helping to birth some babies and save the lives of some, while ripping others out of wombs in shreds or screaming, cutting them up and selling them for spare parts, as all in a day’s work?
Of course he didn’t. The last prelate for the diocese was a leftist, too. He just wasn’t as vocal.
The progressivism of San Francisco’s Cardinal McElroy is pretty significant.
He doesn’t like home schoolers, for one, particularly not Catholic ones.