Robert Walter McElroy was born in San Francisco on 5 February 1954. He took degrees at Harvard and Stanford before ordination for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1980, and spent more than fifteen years as a parish priest at St Gregory's, San Mateo. Benedict XVI appointed him auxiliary bishop of San Francisco in 2010, and Francis made him the sixth Bishop of San Diego in March 2015, where he convened three diocesan synods and became the leading American advocate of the synodal path.
Francis created him a cardinal on 27 August 2022. A participant in the global Synod on Synodality of 2023–2024 and a member of the dicasteries for Integral Human Development and for Laity, Family and Life, he argued in print for a Church of “radical inclusion.” On 6 January 2025 Francis appointed him Archbishop of Washington, succeeding Cardinal Wilton Gregory in the capital during the opening weeks of the second Trump administration; he was installed on 11 March 2025.
Consequential Quotes
The whole of the Catholic community throughout the world is being called to a fundamental renewal.
We are called to be pilgrims of hope in a wounded world, not ignoring the suffering that abounds, but seeing it as a call to strive even more deeply to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into our lives and our nation and our world.
Mercy and compassion must be our first impulse when confronted with sin and human failure.
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.
Major Works & Initiatives
Archbishop of Washington
The Church's face in the nation's capital.
Bishop of San Diego
Three diocesan synods and a synodal model for the US Church.
The Synod on Synodality
Among Francis's chosen participants and its leading American interpreter.
The Search for an American Public Theology
His Gregorian dissertation (Paulist Press) on John Courtney Murray's contribution to American public theology and religious liberty.
Controversies
“Radical inclusion” (2023)
McElroy's January 2023 essay in America magazine, calling for radical inclusion — including on questions of Eucharistic discipline for the divorced and remarried and for LGBTQ Catholics — drew public rebuttals from fellow bishops and became a flashpoint in the American Church's synodality debate.