San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy said Thursday that he has no plans to meet President Donald Trump when, in two weeks, he becomes archbishop of the Washington diocese.
“I don’t think in the short run I’ll be meeting with President Trump,” he said, noting that his primary role will be pastoral — as leader of the D.C. Catholic community.
But in his farewell news conference as San Diego’s Roman Catholic leader, McElroy said the church’s role in the nation’s capital is not to solve political problems or steer policy but to give witness to those affected by national actions.
“We’re in a turning point moment in the history of our country,” he told news crews in the chapel of the diocesan Pastoral Center.
“This is a moment where we really have to grapple with: What does it mean in our society to be a compassionate society … and we believe in the human dignity of every person?”
He added:”Those are the areas of witness that the church is called to bring.”
McElroy said the pope isn’t expected to pick a new bishop for San Diego-Imperial counties for eight months or a year.
But the diocese expects to elect a new administrator March 17 after a secret vote of the local College of Counselors, an 11-member body that includes San Diego’s three auxiliary bishops and eight priests named by McElroy.
Joe Biden, a Catholic close to Pope Francis, was among many people to call McElroy recently about his health.
“I had a lengthy call with President Biden the other day,” said McElroy, whose Washington connections include Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts — they were Harvard classmates. Biden shared that he was praying for the pontiff.
On Tuesday, he said, all the priests of the diocese gathered to pray for Pope Francis, in critical but stable condition after a bout with double pneumonia.
“We prayed the rosary for the Holy Father, for his health. The situation looks better now,” he said of the pope’s condition, “and I’m very happy for that personally” and hoping that Francis will stay pope “for some time to come.”
McElroy, a sharp critic of the previous and current Trump administration and its policies of mass deportations, which he has called “incompatible with Catholic doctrine,” added that Pope Francis shares his profound interest in the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The border is a great concern of his, and the situation for migrants, so every time I see him he asks: How is the border? How is the situation for migrants? So he has a knowledge of San Diego in that sense and, in a wider sense, the vibrancy of the church here.”
McElroy — with the city naming a day in his honor Wednesday — said his nearly 10 years as San Diego’s Catholic leader had been a “rich joy for me. … It has been a great grace for me being here, and part of my heart will always be in San Diego. … The work of God will be sustained long after I go.”
He called the prospect of ICE raids on churches “a deeply moral question.” Such raids “strike fear in everybody’s heart,” he said of the undocumented. “It acts as a deterrent to people going to church and freely worshiping.”
He said Pope Francis hasn’t specifically said anything on that question.
“But I can tell you without fear of hesitation, he would be against such” moves, McElroy said.
He said the pope recently wrote a letter to U.S. bishops noting that Catholic teaching says a country has a right to control its borders, “a legitimate objective to pursue.”
But what is going on now, he said, citing the pope’s letter, is a “wider cultural attack” on those fleeing persecution and violence.
The pope said a problem in society is an effort to portray immigrants as criminals.
“When you classify people as criminals,” McElroy said, you class them as “the other, as different,” and thus deserving of lesser treatment.
Although the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has sued the government to resume financial aid for legally admitted refugee resettlement, McElroy said he had no role to play in that case, filed in Washington.
“Our own [San Diego] Catholic Charities has been very, very active — and proud of the work they have done,” he said. “At one point, we were transitioning about 800 a day,” mostly to relatives in the United States.
“That work was done with substantial federal funding” along with “generous” state support, he said.
McElroy’s installation Mass as D.C. archbishop, set for March 11, “won’t occur” if he’s in Rome for a potential papal conclave, he noted after recalling the prayers his diocese has offered for the pope’s recovery.
He said he won’t be archbishop until such an installation takes place. It would be postponed.
As far as any prospect of meeting Trump, McElroy — who will have a large share of Hispanic parishioners in Washington, most of them from Central America — said the Washington-based Conference of Catholic Bishops is the liaison with the government.
McElroy will succeed retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who has led Washington’s Archdiocese since 2019, where he became the city’s first Black archbishop. In 2020, Francis elevated him to the College of Cardinals, making him the first Black U.S. cardinal.
Over the last decade, McElroy has frequently echoed the pope’s prioritization of migrants and refugees as well as climate and other environmental concerns.
The cardinal also has called for “radical inclusion” in the church, particularly among divorced and remarried and LGBTQ Catholics. Those statements have made waves, with at least one conservative U.S. bishop suggesting the cardinal was a “heretic.”
McElroy began his career in San Francisco in 1980 and quickly established himself as a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights.
“Our political society has been poisoned by a tribalism that is sapping our energy as a people and endangering our democracy,” he wrote in 2023. “And that poison has entered destructively into the life of the church.”
Responding to a question about his health 3 1/2 years after undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery, McElroy — who turned 71 this month — said those medical issues have been resolved and he’s lost some weight, per doctor’s orders.
“I actually feel good now,” he said. “I think I’m OK.”
After Thursday’s half-hour press conference, McElroy made the rounds of reporters and shook hands. One cameraman said: “Best of luck in Washington.”
McElroy replied: “Thanks, I’ll need it.”
