Pope Francis has appointed San Diego’s Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, 70, of San Diego as the new archbishop of Washington, the Holy See announced on 6 January.
Recognised internationally as one of the intellectual heavyweights in the US 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, writes Gerard O’Connell in America Magazine.
Born on 5 February, 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.
In an article written for America magazine in October 2013, titled “A Church for the Poor,” Cardinal McElroy 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.”
As a priest, he served in a variety of roles in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, including as a pastor in three different parishes. 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 6 July, 2010. Pope Francis named him bishop of San Diego on 3 March, 2015.
Cardinal McElroy received his red cardinal’s hat on 27 August, 2022. Pope Francis also named him as one of his papal appointments to the synods on the Amazon and on synodality.
In a 2022 article, also in America Magazine, Cardinal McElroy wrote that Cardijn’s “electrifying” see-judge-act method lies at the heart of the synodality process.
Cardinal McElroy also told Vatican News in an interview that the just war theory never fits with the message of the Gospel, no matter how technically “moral” the theory may be.
“In the life of the Church,” said Cardinal McElroy, “just war theories are a secondary element in Catholic teaching; the first is that we should not engage in warfare at all.”
In 2021, the pope appointed him to the board of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
READ MORE
Cardinal McElroy to lead D.C. archdiocese, Vatican announces (America Magazine)
Cardinal McElroy: Pax Christi’s Nonviolence Institute will push to peripheries (Vatican News)
Synodality and Cardijn’s ‘electrifying’ see-judge-act
See-judge-act bishop now a cardinal
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