Pope Francis names Trump critic McElroy as Washington's new archbishop

6/1/2025 20:02

Pope Francis on Monday named a Catholic cardinal who has criticized Donald Trump's political agenda as the new leader for the Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., days before Trump is set to be inaugurated as U.S. president.



Cardinal Robert McElroy, 70, has been the bishop of San Diego since 2015. He will replace Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who has led the archdiocese of Washington since 2019 and is retiring.



McElroy sharply criticized Trump's plan during his first administration to launch a mass deportation campaign targeting millions of immigrants living in the United States.



He called on Americans to "disrupt" those plans in a 2017 speech and later told a Catholic magazine that Catholics "simply can't stand by and watch get deported".



"It's a bold move," Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who has followed the Francis papacy closely, said of McElroy's appointment.



Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia, noted the announcement came on the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by rioters who hoped to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.