Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego to the board of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. The news is reported in the new Vatican yearbook (Annuario Pontificio 2021) that has just been published.
His appointment comes as no surprise since Pope Francis invited him to participate in the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian Region in October 2019. He was one of only three bishops from the United States who participated in that synod; the other two were Cardinals Sean O’Malley of Boston, a member of the pope’s council of cardinal advisors, and Kevin Farrell, prefect head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life.
Bishop McElroy, a graduate of Harvard University, Stanford University and the Pontifical Gregorian University, is recognized in Rome as a top expert on the social doctrine of the church. He had earlier participated in the Vatican symposium on “integral disarmament,” in November 2017, at which Pope Francis not only condemned the use but also the possession of nuclear weapons.
Bishop McElroy is recognized in Rome as an expert on the social doctrine of the church and had participated in the symposium on “integral disarmament” at which Pope Francis condemned the use and the possession of nuclear weapons.
The dicastery is headed by the Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson. Its members come from all continents to represent the universality of the church and include eight cardinals, 11 bishops, three clerics and 18 laypeople, including three women religious….
The above comes from an April 20 story in America magazine.
Birds of a feather . . .
My words exactly Juan. You beat me to it,
Sauce for the goose…
America magazine and CCD need editors. They repeat, virtually verbatim, sentences in sequential paragraphs. Just looks bad.
An expert on the social doctrine of the church? I might be laughing all day about that.
It’s only going to get worse, they care not for your soul. Get yourself into a state of grace, and stay there.
Bishop McElroy and the truthiness of his word salads: He’ll lettuce know.
Before the Internet, you didn’t know what your bishop was like. You went to Mass on Sunday. Maybe you prayed a rosary. You saw the bishop at Confirmation so depending on how many kids you had, that was how many times you saw him. Maybe you got a Catholic newspaper-my family didn’t. Maybe there was a fundraising drive.
You just lived your faith. You didn’t need a bishop telling you and other people what to do. Rude people might talk about how big the house they lived in was or what kind of car they drove.
And nobody but priests knew that much about the Vatican. Who knew there was something called a dicastery? And who knew who was on it?
Let God run His own Church and you take care of your vocation.
I’m old enough to remember then Archbishop Mahony having a helicopter. That was well before the internet. Believe me, we knew. In my opinion, God needs to do a better job running his church. The scandals are fatiguing and demoralizing the faithful. The very people who are supposed to be the guiding and stabilizing forces in the church are the ones destabilizing and corrupting it. Hard to affirm that God is pleased with his bishops, much less that he has selected these men to be his bishops. Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison would never have allowed their corporations to degenerate into the incoherent and incompetent mess of managers that the Catholic Church has today.
I guess he could not find a traditional priest/bishop/ cardinal. Sad that this was choice.
He could’ve found a traditional priest, bishop or cardinal. For that matter, even if not particularly “traditional,” he could’ve found a person who was simply a Catholic (one who believes what the Catholic Church teaches). He didn’t want to (apparently).
If only he would go to Rome permanently. Is that why, maybe, we have two auxiliary bishops??
What a great loss to Christ and His Church, are unfaithful clerics like the Pope and Bp. McElroy! McElroy was born in 1954, and just turned age 67. He has eight more years until he is required, by Vatican II rules, to retire. Eight more years to do his “dirty work” to further sin in the world– especially, homosexuality– and destroy the Church and society.
Correction if you don’t mind: He is not required to retire in 8 years but to offer his resignation. It can be declined like Pope St. John Paul II declined Cardinal Ratzinger’s.
It used to take a long time but Pope Francis has sped up the process a lot.
Cupich, the pope’s point man in America and one of the “morally compromised men” as Der Spiegel magazine described the type of men with whom the pope surrounds himself, is the worst Cardinal in America closely followed by Tobin of Newark, another of the pope’s favorites. Anyone who wishes to know who are the worst bishops in the world should make a list of this pope’s appointments. None of them teach nor practice the Catholic faith. Following them is the way to hell. I read that other bishops were shocked and appalled when Cupich was appointed because he either was not on the list of recommendations for bishop or #14 out of 14. He’s a McCarrick “boy. The list of those who preach the faith correctly includes Cardinals Raymond Burke and Aquila of the US and Muller of Germany. Burke is considered to be the foremost canon lawyer in the Church and Muller is a highly respected Cardinal and one of the 4 “Dubia” Cardinals as is Burke. Both headed very important departments until this pope demoted them. Archbishop Chaput, another of the “good guys” was never appointed Cardinal even though Philadelphia’s archbishop is always granted a “red hat” while Newark has never had a Cardinal until now. Tobin was involved in at least one payment to a McCarrick victim.
“Pope Francis reaches out again to tap Bishop McElroy”
there’s a misspelling in the headline – should read:
“Pope Francis reaches out again to TIP Bishop McElroy”
ostensibly for his fine service in destroying the Church.