Monday, February 17, 2025

Pope Francis Appoints Archbishop Who Urged Resistance to Trump

by Daniel Greenfield
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Predictable. All too predictable.

Pope Francis would never dare to do this in Communist China or in any totalitarian regime. However, in the United States, he feels free to appoint an enemy of the incoming president to undermine him.

Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy, a vocal defender of migrants and critic of Donald Trump’s first administration, as the next archbishop of Washington, DC.

Cardinal McElroy, 70, is a strong supporter of Francis’ priorities on refugees, the environment and welcoming LGBTQ Catholics…

Early in Trump’s first term, then-Bishop McElroy gave a speech in Modesto, California, specifically referencing Trump and urging Catholics to become “disruptors” of the anti-immigrant agenda.

“We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families. We must disrupt those who portray refugees as enemies rather than our brothers and sisters in terrible need,” he said.

And after Trump’s first election victory in 2016, McElroy lamented “a profound sickness in the soul in American political life” and that it would be “unthinkable” for Catholics to “stand by while more than ten percent of our flock is ripped from our midst and deported.”

Massimo Faggioli, a church historian who teaches at Villanova University in Pennsylvania and follows the Francis papacy closely, told CNN the appointment is a “bold move” by the pope and that announcing it on the anniversary of the January 6 US Capitol attack and two weeks before Trump’s inauguration is the “statement in the [announcement] statement.”

True. And shamelessly so. It’s a deliberate slap in the face. But it’s hard to see how many minds this will actually change. The Catholic Church, like many religious groups, is increasingly split between those who are serious about their faith and those who are serious about their leftist politics.

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Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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