Diocese of San Diego
CV NEWS FEED // Cardinal Robert McElroy, bishop of San Diego, was featured in Harvard Magazine’s alumni profiles this month as he provided thoughts “on a changing Catholic Church.”
McElroy, who graduated from Harvard University in 1976, was named bishop of San Diego in 2015 by Pope Francis and appointed to the College of Cardinals in 2022.
He has also provided controversial views on sexuality and LGBT-identifying individuals and pushes for acceptance within the Church, agreeing with Pope Francis’ idea “that the Church is a field hospital bringing healing to souls, all in need of grace and support from one another, not condemnation.”
According to Harvard Magazine, McElroy said that while most Catholics “admire and cherish” Pope Francis, “the ideological polarization that cripples our society at this moment shapes divergent responses to the pope’s teachings,” in regards to issues like climate change, LGBT individuals, and war.
“Many bishops who oppose the direction in which Pope Francis is leading the Church worry that his pastoral approach undermines the dedication to truth that is part of Catholic faith,” McElroy added. “Francis tells us that for the Christian, truth is not an idea, but a person—Jesus Christ—who calls us to conversion in love and mercy.”
McElroy told Harvard Magazine that political tribalism has entered the Church, which has resulted in a need to reform “our own structures of exclusion.” According to him, reform “will require a long pilgrimage of sustained prayer, reflection, dialogue and action—all of which should begin now.”
He also expressed sadness that partisan and political conflict is “so easily sown” and “impedes functional progress.”
McElroy told Harvard Magazine that his work to include LGBT individuals in the Church began in the 1980s as a young parish priest in San Francisco, when he visited HIV-positive parishioners.
“[V]ery often their families refused to embrace them in their illness,” he said. “I think it was then that I began to seek ways to show that LGBTQ+ persons are truly, equally members of the Catholic Church and that all dimensions and attitudes of exclusion should end.”
Studying history at Harvard helped influence and expand his opinions, as he deliberately chose the school for exposure to other worldviews. After Harvard, he obtained a master’s degree in American history from Stanford, and a master’s in divinity from St. Patrick’s Seminary.
McElroy told Harvard Magazine that the experiences from all three schools “introduced me to a wide diversity of human experiences, cultures, and social environments.”
“Hopefully, this created in me a greater empathy, a willingness to listen, and an understanding that my own experience was just a small microcosm of the human reality in our world,” he said.
