Pope Francis has appointed San Diego’s Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, 70, as the new archbishop of Washington. The Vatican announced the appointment at noon today, Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany.
Cardinal McElroy succeeds Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, who has served as chief pastor of the Washington archdiocese since April 2019 and whose resignation the pope accepted two years after he reached the retirement age of 75. The cardinal turned 77 on Dec. 7, 2024.
Pope Francis’ decision to appoint Cardinal McElroy came as no surprise in Rome where he has long been seen as the U.S. bishop best qualified to lead the archdiocese in the nation’s capital at this delicate moment in the history of both the United States and the world. The migration question has become a major concern and wars are being waged in the Holy Land and Ukraine. The United States is deeply involved in both conflicts.
Recognized internationally as one of the intellectual heavyweights in the U.S. hierarchy and a specialist in the social teaching of the church, Cardinal McElroy is a bishop who has wholeheartedly embraced the synodal vision and pastoral approach of Pope Francis.
The Archdiocese of Washington is home to more than 667,000 Catholics, 139 parishes and 90 Catholic schools.
Born on Feb. 5, 1954, into a Catholic family in San Francisco, one of five children, McElroy gained his first degree at Harvard University in 1975 and went on to earn a master’s degree in history at Stanford University in 1976. After that he entered St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, the major seminary for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, to study for the priesthood and was ordained a priest on April 12, 1980.
He went on to earn a theology degree from the Jesuit School of Theology in the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., in 1985, with a thesis titled, “Freedom for faith: John Courtney Murray and the Constitutional question, 1942-1954.” In 1986, he was awarded a doctorate in moral theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University with a dissertation that drew substantially from the work of John Courtney Murray in fashioning a framework for Catholic public discourse in American society. This was later published by Paulist Press in 1989, as The Search for an American Public Theology.
In 1989, he earned a doctorate in political science from Stanford University, with an empirical study of the role of ethics in foreign policy decision-making. It was published by Princeton University Press in 1992 under the title: Morality and American Foreign Policy: The Role of Ethics in International Affairs. The U.S. State Department used his book for its diplomats and had it translated into other languages for use in other countries.
A U.S. prelate, now deceased, who knew McElroy well but asked for anonymity, once described him to me as “a prayerful, contemplative man,” endowed “with an extraordinarily gifted intelligence and imagination” and “not self-promoting.” He portrayed him as a true pastor, concerned about his people and very attentive to them, especially when they are suffering or in difficulty. Moreover, he added, “Bishop Bob” has “the gift of prudence” but also “the courage to break new ground.”
Cardinal McElroy fully shares Pope Francis’ call for the church to be “a poor church and for the poor.” In a seminal article written for America magazine in October 2013, titled “A Church for the Poor,” he argued that if the Catholic Church in the United States is to be truly “a church of the poor, it must elevate the issue of poverty to the very top of its political agenda.”
After his ordination, he served in a variety of roles in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, including as a pastor in three different parishes, serving one for 15 years. He was vicar-general under Archbishop John R. Quinn and also, for a short time, under Archbishop (later Cardinal) William Levada. He also taught in seminary and university appointments.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as auxiliary bishop of San Francisco on July 6, 2010. Pope Francis named him bishop of San Diego on March 3, 2015, where he has worked to build a synodal church in that part of California. He is expected to do the same now as archbishop of Washington.
Pope Francis gave Bishop McElroy the cardinal’s red hat on Aug. 27, 2022, and named him as one of his papal appointments to the synods on the Amazon and on synodality.
In 2021, the pope also named Cardinal McElroy to the board of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, which among other things focuses on questions related to social justice, poverty, war and peace, the arms trade, nuclear issues, migration and environmental matters.
