Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy, a vocal defender of migrants and critic of Donald Trump\u2019s first administration, as the next archbishop of Washington, DC. <\/p>\n
Cardinal McElroy, 70, is a strong supporter of Francis\u2019 priorities on refugees, the environment and welcoming LGBTQ Catholics. He will succeed Cardinal Wilton Gregory, 77, who was the first African-American Archbishop of Washington, DC. <\/p>\n
Francis also appointed on Monday the first female leader of a Vatican department. Sister Simona Brambilla will become prefect of the Holy See\u2019s religious life office, which has responsibility for nuns, monks and friars. <\/p>\n
Early in Trump\u2019s first term, then-Bishop McElroy gave a speech in Modesto, California, specifically referencing Trump and urging Catholics to become \u201cdisruptors\u201d of the anti-immigrant agenda. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
And after Trump\u2019s first election victory in 2016, McElroy lamented \u201ca profound sickness in the soul in American political life\u201d and that it would be \u201cunthinkable\u201d for Catholics to \u201cstand by while more than ten percent of our flock is ripped from our midst and deported.\u201d <\/p>\n
The appointment of McElroy sends a signal about how Pope Francis and the Vatican plan to navigate a second Trump administration and follows Trump\u2019s decision to nominate a critic of Francis as his Vatican ambassador. The pope also is due to have a farewell meeting with President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic who had a warm rapport with Francis, on Friday. <\/p>\n
McElroy, who holds a doctorate in political science from Stanford University along with a doctorate in theology from a Roman university, can be relied on by the pope to articulate Catholic teaching on matters such as migration and protection of the most vulnerable in society. <\/p>\n
Brambilla, who is from Monza, northern Italy, qualified as a nurse before entering her religious community, has a doctorate in psychology and has worked as a missionary in Mozambique. She has until now been serving as the number two at the Vatican office that she will now lead. The pope also appointed a cardinal, \u00c1ngel Fern\u00e1ndez Artime, as \u201cpro-prefect\u201d of the department, who will work with Brambilla. <\/p>\n
During his pontificate, Francis has sought to appoint more female leaders inside the church\u2019s central administration, although there have been calls for him to go further with the role of women in the church becoming an urgent topic of discussion. <\/p>\n
According to the Vatican, from 2013 to 2023 the percentage of women working for the Holy See and Vatican City State rose from 19.2% to 23.4%. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy, a vocal defender of migrants and critic of Donald Trump\u2019s first administration, as the next archbishop of Washington, DC. Cardinal McElroy, 70, is a strong supporter of Francis\u2019 priorities on refugees, the environment and welcoming LGBTQ Catholics. He will succeed Cardinal Wilton Gregory, 77, who was the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}