McElroy speaks out against mass deportations as "incompatible with Catholic doctrine" in first appearance as Archbishop
By Miriam Raftery
Photo of Cardinal McElroy by Chris Stone, Times of San Diego
January 8, 2025 (San Diego) – Pope Francis on Monday named San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy has the new Archbishop of Washington D.C., where is expected to provide a strong moral voice opposing some policies of the incoming Trump administration.
McElroy was appointed by Pope Francis to serve as Bishop in San Diego in 2015 and in 2022 was elevated to Cardinal. He replaces retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory,77, as Archbishop in the district that includes the nation’s capitol and is home to more than 667,000 Catholics.
Archbishop McElroy, in an online press conference Monday, acknowledged that each nation has a right to control its borders, but he denounced Trump’s call for mass deportation of immigrations. “We are called always to have a sense of the dignity of every human person, and thus plans which have been talked about...of having a wider indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
McElroy also spoke of climate change, which the Trump administration refuses to acknowledge as a real threat to humanity. “I think one of the greatest challenges for the Church in the world at this moment is that of the care for our home on this Earth, for the planet, and all of the abuse which it is suffering,” said McElroy, who supports Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical, Catholic News Agency reports.
The new Archbishop has also questioned why issues such as poverty, racism, immigration and climate change are not identified as priorities at the U.S. Bishops’ conference over social issues such as abortion. McElroy has supported providing Communion to politicians regardless of their stances on abortion. He has also denounced bullying of LGBTQ+ youths.
Support for McElroy’s appointment is not universal. Attorneys representing alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests in the San Diego Roman Catholic Diocese have criticized the appointment, NBC 7 reports.
Praise by some for McElroy’s often progressive views “ignores the fact that he has been anything but progressive when it comes to protecting victims of child sexual assault in San Diego,” attorney Morgan Stewart states. “These victims have suffered pain for a lifetime because of their horrendous sexual abuse by San Diego priests.”
Though the alleged abuse occurred before McElroy came to San Diego, Stewart faults McElroy for putting the San Diego Archdiocese into bankruptcy last year, a move McElroy said was to balance the competing needs of compensating victims vs. continuing good works of the diocese, but which the attorney says could “delay or deny compensation to over 500 victims.”