(Five days before he was installed as the new archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy was interviewed on March 6, 2025 by Mark Zimmermann, editor of the Catholic Standard newspaper and website of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, and by Rafael Roncal, the editor of the archdiocese’s Spanish-language newspaper and website, El Pregonero. On Jan. 6, Pope Francis announced that he had accepted the resignation of Cardinal Wilton Gregory as the archbishop of Washington and had appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego to succeed him in that role. Cardinal Gregory, who had served as the archbishop of Washington since 2019, had submitted his resignation as required by Church law when he turned 75 on Dec. 7, 2022. Cardinal McElroy was installed as the new archbishop of Washington on March 11 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
The March 13 edition of the Catholic Standard newspaper included an article drawn from the interview and extensive excerpts from it, which also appeared on the Catholic Standard website:
Here are more excerpts from that interview with Cardinal McElroy.)
Rafael Roncal: “You mentioned that people lost faith. More than a quarter of Americans say they are atheist or agnostic or similar. Church attendance has declined here and fallen sharply in Europe. How can we answer this growing challenge?”
Cardinal McElroy: “I don’t know if you saw this, just the last week, they had the newest study come out, I think it was a Pew study on faith, which said, the diminution of Christians has stopped for the first time in the United States. So whether that’s a stop that's going to continue, we’ll have to see. But it has stopped now, which is a good sign.
“But it is an enormous problem… There is a man named Christian Smith, he’s a sociologist at Notre Dame, and he’s tracked young people, particularly, in cohort studies, all through a period of time, more than 20 years now. So he interviews the same people, I think, every three years on a set of questions about religion, practice, faith, morals. He found certain obstacles that occurred to people’s faith, but he found tremendous openness to, on the deepest level, belief, to being believers, to being seekers, seeking faith, that even when affiliation with a particular church does not exist, that seeking for transcendence and the seeking for God endures. We have to find a way to embrace that and walk with people and help them find that in the Church, what they are seeking… The vast majority of people who are drifting away still are seekers. They seek the transcendent in their life. We have to help them understand that which they're seeking is the God of Jesus Christ. And we have to find the right way to do that.”
The immigration issue
Rafael Roncal: “Most undocumented immigrants living in that country are decent people who work hard. Why do you believe it is so difficult to understand this for many people?”
Cardinal McElroy: “Well, this is my pastoral world from San Diego, and it’s the pastoral world that I’m going to encounter here, in that large numbers of undocumented people (are here). In San Diego, our Catholic population is about 1.4 million Catholics, and we probably have 180,000 undocumented men, women and children in families. And so many people in our parishes and our communities are people who live family lives, building up their communities, are people of faith, people living good, solid lives, moral lives, and yet this fear has been unleashed on them, because of their undocumented status.
“And so, it is critical for the Church that we stand with these communities at this time, and not only with words, but with our actions too, to stand with those who are undocumented. Now, as to why this has developed in our country at this point, I’d say a couple of things. The first thing is, for the past more than 20 years, our nation’s immigration laws have been broken. The system is broken. The Congress has been unable to address a whole series of dysfunctionalities in our laws, about who we let in and why we let them in, what is asylum, how we secure the borders, how we deal with people who really need to be let in because their plight is so difficult, how we deal with people who should never be let in, because they have criminal backgrounds or whatever.
“But these laws have they have been addressed in Congress, and it never gets done. I remember going to see (House) Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Pelosi one time, the same day, a group of us bishops. And it was at the point where the Senate had passed a law that was a good way of addressing all of these things. How do we balance security for the borders? How do we balance employment law? How do we balance giving status over time to those who are undocumented, living within our midst? And it had passed the Senate, and all it needed to do was come to the House. So we were trying to see if the speaker could bring it to the House. We believe there were enough Republican votes to pass it. But it never happened because of the politics.
“So, our laws are broken. That’s the key background. And because of that, one element is people are very frustrated with the border being so unmanageable. And so I lived on the border in (the Diocese of) San Diego, and most people don’t understand the border. They think of the border as kind of a rigid thing. In San Diego, it’s the second largest port of entry in the world. More than 250,000 people cross that border legally every day, going one way or the other. We had people at our pastoral center in San Diego who lived in Tijuana because the housing was less expensive. People who are business people, and workers in Tijuana, who live in San Diego, because they want their kids to go to American schools. So for all these different reasons, the borders are very porous. The reality is a very porous commercial reality, too.
“Catholic teaching says a nation has the right to secure its borders, and those borders because they’ve not been effectively secured, it’s been allowed to be portrayed as some sort of chaos, and it has been unmanageable. But where that argument really has gone wrong is when it’s used to say there’s a chaos that is causing crime and corruption in our country. That has become the mantra, and that really is a disservice to the truth of the undocumented communities in our midst. That’s a caricature, and it’s a reprehensible caricature.
“The country has a right to secure its borders. That’s a legitimate objective. I hope that can be accomplished. The country has a right to eject those who have committed serious crimes, felonies. But the notion that the vast majority of those who are in our midst, who are men and women and children and families who have often had to flee terrible situations of injustice or economic degradation or danger to their person from gangs, that these people who have had to flee here and are living among us in such an exemplary way, that we would go after them and in a mass, indiscriminate deportation, eject them from our country, would be a grave stain upon the United States in my view.
“So, when you ask, what are the causes of it? This is part of our history. In each wave of immigration, there has been a great surge of caricature of the immigrants coming to our country. When the Irish came in the 1830s and ‘40s, when the Italians and the Poles came in the 1880s, they were called terrible names. The argument was they were lesser than the Europeans in the center of the continent, and they should not be let in because they’re lowering the stock in the United States. We hear these same arguments laid down, and it’s just as reprehensible now as it was in those days.”
Rafael Roncal: “…If every human being has some dignity and value, regardless of what their papers say, but dehumanizing the undocumented, (if) we accept that particular reality, do you think that dawn of division and the excuse for intolerance, if left open, can reach everybody in the future, not just the undocumented?”
Cardinal McElroy: “Yes. Absolutely, yes. That’s why when Pope Francis wrote recently to the bishops’ conference, he put his finger right on the problem and the conversation that we’re having on immigration in the United States right now, because he said in that letter, a country has a right to control its borders, regulate its borders, and that’s a good thing. But he said the core of what’s going on now that is so contrary to the most fundamental Christian beliefs is the effort to label all of these men and women and children who came here without documentation from these terrible conditions, to label them all perpetually as criminals. Because when you label someone as criminal, you dehumanize them, you say they’re the other, they’re not like us. And thus it is all right to treat them as lesser, as less human than us. That’s a very dangerous thing. I think he was absolutely correct in pointing to that as the problem. And that’s what I think is at the core of the danger we face as a country now. And that’s why we as Christians have to stand up and say, these are our neighbors. These are men and women and children who we know, and they live good lives. They’re not criminals.
“And to label them all as criminals is part of this effort which follows in the line of prejudices that we’ve seen worked out. Because really what’s going on is the argument that they are corroding American culture by coming here. It was the same argument that they said about the Portuguese and the Italians and the Poles when they came, the same thing they said about the Irish, that they are corroding American culture and making it something lower. That’s a very dangerous and offensive development that needs to be rooted out wherever it’s seen.”
Rafael Roncal: “What message would you give to the immigrant community at this critical time?”
Cardinal McElroy: “Sorrow. Love. Embrace. Compassion. Advocacy and solidarity. And all done in God’s name.”
A student of history comes to Washington
Mark Zimmermann: “You’re a student of (American) history and political science with advanced degrees in both. (Cardinal McElroy has a bachelor’s degree in American history from Harvard College. Later he attended graduate school at Stanford University, where he received a master’s degree in American history and a doctorate in political science.) What does it mean to you to come here and serve as the archbishop of Washington? And next year is the 250th anniversary of our country. What does it mean for you to be in this role?”
Cardinal McElroy: “Well, to me, it’s a fascinating place to be. My primary role, of course, is a pastoral one, you know, and so it’s coming to know the parish communities and the individuals and leaders. But it’s within the context of this unique city, an area which is the nation’s capital, and that (is connected to) so many of the things that I had studied as a student.
“When I was in college, we would come down a couple times a year to Washington to visit different things and attend different meetings and see things. I became familiar with it in that way. But there’s always a sense of reverence for so many of these shrines of democracy which exist, to encounter them and even some of the newer ones that have been done like the Holocaust Museum. I love the Korean War Memorial that they did.
“It is so beautiful in so many ways. The Martin Luther King (Memorial). And then, of course, the traditional ones at the Capitol and the White House and the Washington Monument, and most of all the Lincoln Memorial, because in my own mind, Lincoln is far and away the most important president we had in the history of our country and the most able in terms of having the abilities that were needed at the moment of great crisis for our country.”
Challenges being faced by federal workers
Mark Zimmermann: “Are there key challenges you’d like to address (as the archbishop of Washington)? You mentioned the immigration issue. Another big issue for our area is the large scale firing of federal workers.”
Cardinal McElroy: “That is going to be a deep wound and a growing wound, I fear, within our parishes and for individuals, because so many of the people who are being fired are people who have been in jobs, where they require talents and skills and, also (they) have had a sense of security in those jobs. So it’s particularly harsh when this comes down on them so abruptly. I was at the cathedral yesterday for Ash Wednesday. I can’t tell you the number of people as they were coming out, I was saying hello as they were coming out, they would ask me to pray for them, for various things, (and) how many said, ‘Please pray for me. I’ve lost my job,’ or ‘my wife has lost her job,’ or ‘I think I’m going to lose my job.’ It’s much in the consciousness of people now, and I fear the ripple effects it will have, not just within the economy of this area, but also within the culture of the area.”
Mark Zimmermann: “What's your pastoral response to that? That’s a difficult situation.”
Cardinal McElroy: “It is a difficult situation. And my concern is that there has to be a clear set of criteria for establishing what’s necessary and what’s not within the federal government. And it doesn’t seem to me that these firings are proceeding from a coherent sense of that. And I think that makes it particularly troublesome, because it’s one thing to let people go when you have to, or because the job isn’t needed or so forth. But always every person is sacred, and should be looked upon in that way, so that at least it’s done in a way that’s thought out, and not kind of as a reactionary process. And I fear we’re falling into that, and I fear there will be a diminishment of the identity of the culture here in Washington. I think it’s going to be very hard.”
Divisions in a polarized society
Rafael Roncal: “We are trying to find out the right narrative thinking in the future… Our divisions and decisions affect real life. What role should we have in the context to have the right narrative for everybody?”
Cardinal McElroy: “I did my doctoral dissertation on John Courtney Murray, who was an American theologian, and what he said is, he was writing about America in the ‘50s, and he said, this is right after the war, which was so disturbing to the culture of the world, which thought, ‘How could this happen?’ And what he said is unless there’s a spiritual and a moral center to a society, the society flies apart. He used the word, he said if it’s flying apart, then there’s a madness that comes in, because people are unable to talk to one another across the boundaries of various divisions, and the forces that tear people aside are more pronounced and larger than the ones that bring people together. He said that’s a society which goes mad. And I fear we’re on the precipice of that, in that we live in a world now where people listen to their own news sources that are reinforcing what, on all sides, reinforcing what their view of the world is and not putting into their daily view things that are contrary to that but are important to know.
“And thus we live in our own reinforcement pools and groups of people, and thus everyone I know says, ‘That’s because we’re only talking to people that think like us on issues of great division.’ And I fear we’re losing a common way of conversation. The Church is really focused on the way we in a society make progress and treat each other with dignity is in conversation, and that our conversations nationally are breaking down, and that to me is the most important challenge we have, because we can’t then build the community.
“Now, in the early days of the Republic, you know, there were conversations too, and they were very strong, and people were divided on various things, but they had a common core that they could come to and thus build a country and build a society, because they had conversations where they could work things out and each see the side of the other to a good degree. I feel we’re losing that now in our country, and that's a great loss for us as a people.”
Gaining insights from movies and travel
Rafael Roncal: “Talking about Pope Francis… (he has said) that God can be found in humor, in football and movies. What do you think of that?”
Cardinal McElroy: “Well, we are a sacramental Church. We believe that God created the whole of creation and that everything God created, He created good. So that in all of these ways, the parts of our lives where we find joy that are wholesome, they are God’s blessings upon us and invite us to understand they are part of the creation God has given to us. And so in all of these things, God is present, you know, whether it’s football. I love to go to movies, for example, I love to go to movies, and I use movies a lot in homilies, because I think they have a lot of insight into people’s spirituality, into people’s moral lives, into people’s questions of longing and doubt and faith.
“And I don’t mean (just) movies that are directly about spiritual things, I mean just movies in general that speak of the human condition poignantly, or brilliantly or in depth. And so, I think all of these things that people find joy in their lives that are wholesome, in all of these things, God is present there. I think this pope says that, you know, he’s done all this work on sports… And you saw where the pope had one (gathering) recently… bringing together all these comedians. As I said, Pope Francis has a great sense of humor… Good humor is a sacrament of God’s presence, too, because when we encounter these wonders of the world God has put there for us that are blessings for us every day, they’re a call for us to pause and see God present there and thank God for them.”
Mark Zimmermann: “What are your favorite movies?”
Cardinal McElroy: “Well, my favorite movie is one that I like a lot, and most people don't see in the same way, my favorite movie is a (2011) movie called ‘The Tree of Life.’ And it’s a very profound movie, it’s probably about three hours. Essentially it’s about a boy growing up in, in Texas and then later on reflecting on his life… The boy’s father is a very good man who loves him, but is tough, (and) believes in the harshness of life, and so the film presents him as the order of nature. And the mother… (believes in) finding God’s grace everywhere, in beauty and flowers, and she’s raising these three sons and trying to teach them that, and he’s trying to teach them the world is a hard place.
“It’s just a beautiful way it unfolds. And ultimately, he chooses the way of the father and his life. He becomes a great architect, but at the end, he’s unfulfilled with it. And it comes back to him (the lessons from his) mother. So, that’s my favorite film of all time. It was very well reviewed. It was nominated for the (for the Best Picture) Academy Award.”
Mark Zimmermann: “And we want to ask you, what do you like to do when you're not working?”
Cardinal McElroy: “One is I do like to go to movies. And I like traveling to places. I love seeing new places. I do like going to new places that I haven’t been before. So like on vacation, I don’t generally go to places I’ve been. I want to see new places now… When I come to new cities or sometimes to new countries, I really like that, because you see a whole new culture and new geography and what you develop is a different way of looking at things.”
Synodality and the culture of encounter
Rafael Roncal: “What are the causes of the culture of encounter not being practiced, and what should we do to make it a daily practice?”
Cardinal McElroy: “To me, the heart of the culture of encounter is that when we meet someone or interact with them, we expect to receive something of grace from them, by listening to them, or experiencing their presence in our lives. It’s the opposite of what is so dominant in our political culture life now, which is you speak to convey your point of view and tell what you have to tell. Encounter is different. It means you meet with people who are different than you are, and you expect to be enriched by that, so that’s a totally different stance. Now we all fail with this all the time. You know, we all want to express our points of view. And that’s part of what encounter is, to express your point of view. But the key is that when you come to people, especially people that by category, you wouldn’t expect them to enrich your life, you have the stance that I think in this encounter, I’m open to being enriched by this person. I think that’s the heart of it.
“And that’s why in that synodal method, you listen, you’re forced to listen. But then once you do, the way they did the rounds in Rome (at the Synod on Synodality), you listened to it, (the comments by) everybody, and then the next set of rounds, you go around, and you can speak, but only about something that somebody else spoke about. You cannot speak about anything that you spoke about. So it means you have to listen, draw from people and speak about that, and not be focused on what you want to get across.
“We did this with our diocesan Pastoral Council (in San Diego), so that you first have to listen to what everybody else said on the subject and then speak about what they had (said), and then begin to come to unity on it. It’s just a different way of listening than most of the council meetings, and I put myself in this role too. I would come, and I would have what I’m going to say all worked out in my mind. And even sometimes when somebody else is speaking, I’m thinking, okay, here’s what I’m going to say to that. Encounter means that’s not what you’re doing. You’re there, you’re part of a dialogue, and you’re contributing, but you’re there expecting others to be able to contribute in great depth also, so to me that’s the great difference of it, that you look at encountering other people as a moment of grace that’s going to have the possibility of enriching you.”
Mark Zimmermann: “In San Diego, you had (diocesan) synods on families and marriage and young adults, and you participated in the Synod on Synodality in Rome. What have you learned from the process, and what do you think it offers to the Church and maybe to our country, because you spoke about how people are not listening to each other?”
Cardinal McElroy: “We started out doing synods. We did one in, 2016, after the Vatican one on marriage and family in 2015. And so, we had a representative from every parish, all the members of the priests’ council were there. And we met over a couple of days. We had working committees leading up to it on different subjects, and so they proposed different things. And then we came to conclusions by consensus. So what was very helpful was that in the listening sessions, people were listened to and convinced by one another…
“What we mainly learned on the first one was after we had these 15 propositions, and I approved them all, there had been consensus for them, so we had a pilot project, 10 parishes to try it out in their parishes. And we were looking for what’s the model to implement these 15 things, and what we found was there is no model, because the parishes were purposefully different, for their demography, for their ideology, for their geography, all these different things. And as a result, their needs were different. So each of them picked two or three of them and ran with them in depth. But they were different. So it taught us in synodality, you don’t look for a model, you look for ways that, in that case, parishes could take elements from the culture of synodality and the prayer that had gone on, and the consensus that emerged and bring it into their parish and let it take root. And it was different from place to place. So when we had the more recent one too, on synodality itself, we did that same thing. So we started with 16 parishes doing this now on synodality, to immerse themselves in the culture, both the pastors, the associate pastors, the lay leadership, the councils, and they had a team set up of synodal people, and so then they each took from the common themes, three or four that they’re going to concretely implement. So it’s a way of teaching people basically to listen and to encounter and actually to make very present in that, that the primary one you’re listening to and encountering is God.”
