At Washington Installation, Cardinal McElroy Calls For Hope, Mercy And Human Dignity

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Washington’s modern archbishop, Cardinal Robert McElroy, encouraged Catholics at his installation Mass on Tuesday (March 11) to score hope and existing mercy in a carrier that included prayers in eight languages, with a pair of mentions of the successfully-being of migrants.

“Mercy and compassion would possibly per chance well peaceful be our first impulse when confronted with sin and human failure,” said the cardinal, who will bear the seat vacated by Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who retired initially of this one year.

The cardinal’s installation Mass on the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Thought, the ideal Catholic Church structure in North The United States, used to be attended by thousands of lay Catholics, besides to seven fellow cardinals and about 80 bishops and 300 clergymen. Additionally in attendance had been native politicians and a few nationwide politicians who’re Catholic, including Dwelling Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and frail Vatican ambassador Callista Gingrich.

At communion, bishops across the ideological spectrum, including Cardinals Blase Cupich and Joseph Tobin and Archbishops Timothy Broglio and William Lori, got here into the aisles to distribute communion to the faithful. In a deepest contact, the choir and these gathered sang, “I am the Bread of Lifestyles,” a smartly-liked hymn that, McElroy shared, used to be written by his grade college choir director, Sister Suzanne Toolan.

Pope Francis’ resolution to give the publish to McElroy, whose previous seat because the bishop of San Diego gave him deep ride with immigration on the US’ southern border, has been interpreted widely in the U.S. Catholic world as a answer to the anti-immigrant insurance policies of President Donald Trump.

At a press conference after his appointment used to be announced on Jan. 6, 2025, McElroy criticized then-President Elect Trump’s proposals, asserting, “Having a much wider, indiscriminate, extensive deportation across the country would possibly per chance well perchance be something that is prone to be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

At his installation on Tuesday, he used to be extra understated nonetheless mentioned immigrants in a homily that recalled the faith, prayer and hope of the 33 Chilean miners who spent 69 days trapped in a collapsed mine in 2010. “God is the Father of us all, and God sees us as equal in dignity and actual worth. How deeply that contrasts with the world that now we score made.

“Divisions of speed and gender and ideology and nationality flourish on this planet of politics, religion, family existence and training. The heart-broken and the migrant are each day dispossessed, and the honor of the unborn is denied,” McElroy lamented.

An fascinating supporter of Francis, McElroy has been a leading convey in the U.S. church for immigrants and the atmosphere besides to the application of the theological device of synodality, all of which were key issues in Francis’ papacy. He has argued for bigger efforts to welcome LGBTQ+ Catholics, echoing a same emphasis by Francis.

In his sermon, McElroy referred loads of cases to Francis’ teachings, including his name for the church to be a discipline clinic and his declaration of 2025 as a one year to alter into “pilgrims of hope.”

“We are known as to be pilgrims of hope in a wounded world, now not ignoring the suffering that abounds nonetheless seeing it as a name to strive much extra deeply to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into our lives and our nation and our world,” he said.

McElroy’s replacement has triggered blowback from conservative Catholics and a few sexual abuse survivors, who bid that he unnoticed info about abuse dedicated by clergy. However the cardinal in his sermon known as for hope because the church confronts a extensive form of challenges.

“What hope we would possibly per chance well bring to our world because the church of Washington if we would possibly per chance well in fact support our society to place others extra as God sees them, loved kids, brothers and sisters,” he said.

McElroy said a pair of of the ideal parts of the Mass in Spanish, including his consecration of the Eucharist nonetheless stumbled over the pronunciation of the names of his Latino auxiliary bishops as he thanked them in his homily.

The Rev. Tim Manatt, a Jesuit learning canon law on the Catholic University of The United States, told RNS that the prominence of Spanish at some stage in the liturgy showed that McElroy “acknowledges handsome how considerable Hispanics are in the U.S. Catholic church.”

Manatt highlighted the importance of McElroy’s scripture preference for his installation, including the Gospel passage where Mary Magdalene speaks with Jesus after his resurrection. “He finds many reasons to be eager for the native church, which got here across to me now not as a platitude, nonetheless something that used to be rather real,” Manatt said of McElroy.

Because the Mass used to be ending, McElroy said, “We’re particularly joyous that the pope looks to be to be doing better,” ahead of leading the Catholics gathered in a decade of the rosary for the pope’s health. He had earlier thanked Francis for “his monumental peep of religion amidst human suffering.”

Judy Coode, communications director for the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA who attended the Mass with loads of alternative Pax Christi workers, told RNS that the present of solidarity from each and each the archdiocese and U.S. bishops on the Mass used to be “touching” and that she favored McElroy’s message in his homily that “we be triumphant and we skedaddle ahead and we esteem every other after we acknowledge that we are neighborhood and that now we score faith in God.”

Within the past, McElroy has participated in Catholic Nonviolence Initiative conferences and backed a Pax Christi USA letter calling on the U.S. to lower navy spending and as a replacement spend money on ending poverty. Coode said she hoped that now that McElroy is in Washington, he’s going to work with Pax Christi USA on peace in the holy land and “the injustice that’s being done to the Palestinian other folks.”

In his homily, McElroy spoke of sexual abuse, asserting, “Within the church, all of us are wounded and all of us are in danger, all of us sinners rapid of mercy and forgiveness. The church sins and is brief of healing, particularly in the failure to supply protection to the younger from sexual abuse.”

Rachel Mastrogiacomo, a survivor of sexual assault by a priest who abused her at some stage in Masses he accepted privately for the 2 of them, has led a contingent of the opposition to McElroy. Whereas the assaults occurred in Minnesota and had been reported ahead of McElroy change into bishop of San Diego, Jacob Bertrand, the priest, used to be allowed to achieve reduction to ministry quickly ahead of McElroy began leading the diocese, and McElroy didn’t do away with him till over a one year into his management when he learned Bertrand used to be being prosecuted.

Mastrogiacomo joined a runt group of protesters out of doorways the Basilica ahead of the installation Mass and known as for contemporary legislation to safeguard abuse survivors. The group additionally known as on Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, to handbook the Trump administration in opening a racketeering investigation, generally mature to prosecute organized crime, into the U.S. Convention of Catholic Bishops’ spend of authorities funds of their humanitarian work with immigrants.

Terence McKiernan, president of Bishop Accountability, a watchdog organization, has additionally protested McElroy’s appointment to Washington, citing his coping with of conferences with Richard Sipe, a researcher and whistleblower who warned McElroy about loads of allegedly abusive Catholic leaders, including now-laicized Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

McElroy has said that Sipe refused to produce him with corroborating evidence and in another case behaved in an untrustworthy manner, preventing McElroy from working with Sipe.

McKiernan told RNS, “That McElroy has now inherited McCarrick’s crozier is a grotesque result of the Catholic abuse machine, which would now not shock Sipe, its preeminent student.”

Survivors Community of these Abused by Monks additionally known as McElroy’s installation in Washington “deeply troubling,” asserting that the skedaddle left victims “feeling retraumatized.”

“Survivors deserve extra than a church hierarchy that rewards these that score enabled such danger; they deserve accountability, transparency, and real healing, now not the persisted empowerment of these that score failed them,” the group told RNS.