As Catholic dioceses in the United States go, Washington, D.C., isn’t especially populous (31st in number of Catholics), Catholic (a little less than the national average), or old (85 years).

But the archdiocese’s location — where the president lives, the U.S. Supreme Court issues its decisions and Congress does whatever it does — makes its leader one of the most quotable clerics in America.

“It’s a combination of proximity and a sense that this is no ordinary archdiocese,” said Msgr. Charles Pope, Register contributor, author, radio host, and pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Catholic Church, which is east of Capitol Hill.

By virtue of his office, the city’s archbishop is also automatically the chancellor of the country’s only pontifical school of higher education, The Catholic University of America.

When the archbishop of Washington speaks, people pay attention — sometimes wondering if they’re hearing echoes from Rome.

“The Archdiocese of Washington has an archbishop who they know Rome picked especially to represent its views,” Msgr. Pope told the Register. “This has a kind of more international authority that goes directly back to the Vatican itself.”

That helps explain why the naming this week of Cardinal Robert McElroy as the new archbishop of the District of Columbia and five counties in southern Maryland was instant national news.

“It just carries more weight, because nobody gets appointed to the Archdiocese of Washington arbitrarily. The pope is generally very careful to pick someone who represents his views,” Msgr. Pope said.

Cardinal McElroy, 70, who has led the Diocese of San Diego since 2015, is widely seen as a progressive. He sharply criticized then-President Donald Trump’s policies concerning illegal immigrants during Trump’s first term, a topic which came up again during the press conference on Monday introducing Cardinal McElroy as the new archbishop.

Created by Rome

The Archdiocese of Washington exists because Rome insisted, over the objections of multiple archbishops of Baltimore, who for nearly 150 years had jurisdiction over the nation’s capital.

Most new dioceses come about because local bishops request it. Washington, though, was a top-down decision.

In 1939, Baltimore Archbishop Michael Curley reluctantly agreed to Washington becoming a separate archdiocese, with himself as head of both.

“Rome, with an eye on political realities, wanted a prominent representative in the capital,” wrote Morris MacGregor in his 2006 book Steadfast in the Faith, a biography of Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle, the city’s second archbishop.

Two years after the split, Archbishop Curley, shortly after Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941, made what he thought was a humorous comment to a reporter about how America was “out looking for war.” After getting reprimanded by the Pope’s representative in the country, Archbishop Curley resolved not to speak publicly on political matters again.

That strategy changed with Cardinal O’Boyle (1896-1987), who in 1948 became the first archbishop of Washington to live in the city and quietly racially integrated parishes and Catholic schools in the years before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 ordered public schools to be desegregated.

He also served as an unofficial national spokesman for U.S. bishops during the 1950s and 1960s in opposition to communism and in support of labor unions, racial integration, refugees, the United Nations, and “a close and equitable partnership between public and volunteer agencies,” according to his biographer.

In 1968, Cardinal Boyle’s clash with numerous priests of the archdiocese over his support for St. Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reiterated the Church’s teaching against artificial contraception, was the most prominent clerical conflict in the nationwide uproar that followed its publication.

Archbishop Boyle was created a cardinal in 1967. Every archbishop of Washington since then has subsequently become a cardinal — except for the latest, Cardinal McElroy, formerly the ordinary of San Diego, who was already a cardinal at the time of his appointment.

Speaking Out

An archbishop of Washington can draw attention that most other bishops can’t.

One example is Cardinal James Hickey (1920-2004), who opposed U.S. military aid to El Salvador during the 1980s, expressing horror over the murder of U.S. missionaries and of the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, now a saint.

Cardinal Hickey visited El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua in November 1982 with two other U.S. bishops. In March 1983, he testified before a U.S. congressional committee about the three countries, criticizing the Marxist government of Nicaragua, but also calling on the U.S. government to engage with it, and identifying what he called “economic injustice,” and not Marxism, as the primary cause of conflict in the region.

As archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Hickey was confident that he represented the views of other bishops in the country.

“I speak for my brother bishops in the United States,” he told members of Congress. “We are aware how visible our position on Central America has been for two years now. We are confident we should be in the midst of the debate about U.S. policy; we have something to say and we do not believe it has been sufficiently heeded.”

On the flip side, if an archbishop of Washington falls, he falls hard.

The public disgrace of Theodore McCarrick, who served as the city’s archbishop between 2001 and 2006, occurred long into his retirement — in 2018, when long-standing accusations that he sexually abused children and seminarians first surfaced publicly, leading Pope Francis to dismiss him from the clerical state in February 2019.

Even so, the scandal exploded — because of the nature of the allegations, of course, but also at least partly because of McCarrick’s long-standing influence in the Church and because of the last post he had, leading the archdiocese of the nation’s capital.

McCarrick’s successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, resigned as archbishop of Washington under pressure in October 2018 — albeit at age 77, past the normal retirement age for a bishop — partly because of the way he handled allegations against McCarrick and partly because of accusations over the way he handled allegations of clergy sex abuse when he served as bishop of Pittsburgh.

Cardinal Wuerl’s successor, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, has gotten credit for steadying the rocking ship during his time as archbishop of Washington, which began in May 2019 and ended this past Monday.

As for outspokenness: Cardinal Gregory pointedly criticized President Trump during his first term on occasion; last Easter he called President Joe Biden a “cafeteria Catholic”; but he didn’t make his position a regular generator of headlines.

In his new role as archbishop of Washington, Cardinal McElroy has several models: a national leader, like Cardinal Boyle (who served from 1948 to 1973); a relatively nonconfrontational leader, like Cardinal William Baum (who served from 1973 to 1980); or someone in the middle, like Cardinal Gregory.

Or he’ll chart his own course. His installation is scheduled for March 11.