When the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, sought to shut down a Catholic charity that was was providing shelter and aid to undocumented migrants at the border, the San Diego cardinal, Robert McElroy, took a robust public stand against the attempt.
“The state of Texas is using governmental pressure to curtail the work of the Church in one of its most fundamental obligations: to feed the hungry, to shelter the homeless, and to provide drink to the thirsty,” McElroy said in a statement at the time. “No government can morally tell us to abandon or limit this mission.”
Last week, as billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg adopted policies that seemed designed to ingratiate themselves with the incoming Trump administration, Pope Francis took a different tack when he tapped the Harvard and Stanford-educated McElroy to the role of archbishop of Washington DC – one of the most high-profile positions in the US Catholic church.
It followed Donald Trump’s own announcement that he was appointing Brian Burch, a rightwing political activist and critic of Francis who heads CatholicVote, a conservative advocacy group, to the role of US ambassador to the Vatican. In his statement, Trump claimed that Burch had helped deliver him more Catholic votes than any other presidential candidate.
Both allies and critics of Francis say the appointments set the stage for conflict between the Vatican and Trump’s Washington, at a time when rightwing and far-right Catholics – from Leonard Leo to Steve Bannon – wield significant influence in the US capital. It was noted, too, that Francis chose 6 January, the anniversary of the Trump-inspired insurrection on the Capitol, to make the announcement.
“McElroy is incredibly polished intellectually. He is a thinker. He is a quiet man and he can say the strongest things against a certain kind of immigration policy with a soft voice. He’s courageous,” said Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology and religious studies, who noted that McElvoy was one of closest officials to Francis in North America.
“He is Francis’s voice in many ways, and being in Washington DC elevates his voice. It is the place where power is brokered, and not just at the White House. In the Congress and the supreme court,” Faggioli added.
Those corridors of power have increasingly been influenced by rightwing Catholics who are opposed to Francis’s agenda. The most prominent politicians who support him are losing influence and power, from the outgoing president Joe Biden to the former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Both are devout Catholics.
Steve Bannon, the Christian nationalist Trump adviser, who is also Catholic, said Francis’s choice of McElroy showed he was on a “collision course” with the incoming White House over one of Trump’s main agenda items.
“The whole process of deportations will begin when President Trump takes his hand off the King James Bible,” Bannon told the Guardian. “Immediately you are going to have the Vatican, through their cardinal, trying to confront this.
Bannon, who lives in Washington DC, said he believed the Catholic church and affiliated charities could face criminal investigations by the DoJ for their role in facilitating what Bannon and other rightwing leaders of the Maga movement have called an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants into the US. “I believe this will lead to the actual technical bankrupty of the church,” he said. McElroy, he added, “is a player, not some shrinking violet”.
Bannon is not the only Maga hardliner to show contempt for church practices. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has previously said that Satan was “controlling the church” and has repeated rightwing claims that Catholic charities are being enriched by US government contracts to help migrants.
In his first press conference last Monday, McElroy said a “wider, indiscriminate, massive deportation across the country would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine”.
It is far from clear whether Trump’s DoJ or judges would find Catholic charity groups liable for helping undocumented immigrants. Texas attorney general Paxton’s efforts to shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House has so far been rejected by lower courts but the case will be heard before the state’s supreme court today.
The issue could get complicated even for some rightwing judges because Annunciation House has argued that its service of immigrants is an issue of religious liberty, a principle frequently cited in conservative legal complaints.
Jerome Wesevich, who represents Annunciation House, said the most fundamental principle of Christianity – loving thy neighbor – was at stake.
“We’re not talking about getting new people in the country, we are trying to make sure people are served and not out on the streets. People can demagogue it but we are trying to serve the people in front of us,” he said.
Just as some supporters of Francis believed McElroy was a pick that seemed too good to be true, Bannon praised the appointment of Brian Burch to represent the US in the Holy See. The job has traditionally gone to major donors but not political operatives. Even the choice of Calista Gingrich, the wife of former House speaker Newt Gingrich, was not seen as too controversial.
Bannon said he believed the choice of Burch was connected to Leonard Leo, the rightwing Catholic activist who has almost singlehandedly turned the supreme court into a rightwing power base. A non-profit linked to Leo has donated more than $1m to Burch’s CatholicVote group.
Burch has previously criticized Francis for his 2023 decision to allow priests to bless same-sex unions, and has accused the pope of governing with a “pattern of vindictiveness”. He has previously suggested the pope would not be serving in his position for too much longer given his advanced age. It is not clear whether the remarks could lead to the Vatican rejecting Burch’s appointment, but observers noted that it was possible.
In 2023, Francis remarked on his critics in the US, saying he faced a “very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” against him.
Vatican watchers are now wondering whether Francis has another possible maneuver in mind that would shape the other high-profile archdiocese: this time in Trump’s native home state of New York, where Cardinal Timothy Dolan – who is seen as an ally of Trump and has said the president-elect “takes his Christian faith seriously” – will be reaching retirement age in February.
If Francis wants to pack a punch, the US could soon see another cardinal who is politically aligned with the Argentine pontiff move to the Big Apple.
