ROME — Pope Francis announced the creation of new cardinals Sunday, among whom is San Diego’s notoriously progressive Bishop Robert W. McElroy, a believer in “climate annihilation” from global warming.
During his tenure as bishop of San Diego, McElroy has consistently downplayed the evil of abortion and, in 2020, made the astounding claim that the “death toll” from climate change is greater than that of abortion and that neither issue should take precedence over the other.
Currently, nearly a million abortions are performed each year in the United States, and annually more than 40 million unborn babies worldwide die from abortion, making it the leading cause of death in the world.
Conversely, there has yet to be a single death ascribable to “climate change,” and the annual death toll from severe weather events has plummeted in recent years, reaching an all-time low of fewer than 10,000 in 2021, a decline of 99 percent from a century ago when a half million people a year died from severe weather.
Prior to the 2020 presidential election, McElroy declared that “the survival of the planet, which is the prerequisite for all human life, is at risk” because of climate change, adding that for this reason, many Catholics feel they “cannot support a candidate for national office who does not vigorously fight climate change.”
“Decisions on climate change in the next four years will either irrevocably amplify or arrest our world’s trajectory toward climate annihilation and the possible ending of all human life on this planet,” he warned.
In 2021, McElroy vocally argued for the McCarrick doctrine on Communion for pro-abortion Catholic politicians, insisting that President Joe Biden should be allowed to continue receiving Holy Communion despite his aggressive advocacy for abortion rights.
McElroy insisted that in dealing with Biden, the American bishops first and foremost needed to “signal unity” to help heal and unify the country.
The bishop’s call for unity and reconciliation beyond partisan differences was a striking departure from his history of open and vitriolic hostility toward former President Donald Trump.
Just a month after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, Bishop McElroy declared war on the president, telling his audience of social justice warriors to disrupt Trump’s efforts whenever and wherever possible.
“President Trump was the candidate of disruption. He was the disrupter,” McElroy said. “Well, now we must all become disrupters,” he said.
In his address, the bishop urged his hearers to resist the temptation to unite under the president and rather oppose him at every turn.
“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,” McElroy said. “We must disrupt those who portray refugees as enemies, rather than our brothers and sisters in terrible need. We must disrupt those who train us to see Muslim men and women and children as sources of fear rather than as children of God.”
“We must disrupt those who seek to rob our medical care, especially from the poor. We must disrupt those who would take even food stamps and nutrition assistance from the mouths of children,” he said.
Curiously, in his litany of the evils of politicians, McElroy omitted the matter of abortion, which the U.S. Bishops’ Conference had declared to be the “preeminent” moral issue in the country today.
In November 2019, Bishop McElroy had, in fact, resisted efforts by the U.S. bishops to declare abortion to be the “preeminent” moral issue for Catholic voters.
At the annual bishops’ meeting, McElroy said he disagreed with language singling out abortion as the “preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself,” saying it was contrary to the teaching of Pope Francis.
Bishop McElroy said the text was “discordant with the Pope’s teaching, if not inconsistent,” despite the pope’s frequent condemnations of abortion. Francis has called abortion a “scourge” and compared the act of abortion to hiring a hitman to take out a child.
At that time, the redoubtable Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, replied to Bishop McElroy, insisting that calling abortion the “preeminent priority” was not just correct but necessary, adding that this position represented no breach with Pope Francis.
Pope Francis speaks to worshipers during the weekly general audience, at Paul-VI hall in the Vatican, on November 3, 2021. (ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images)
“I am against anyone saying that our stating that [abortion] is preeminent is contrary to the teaching of the Pope, because that isn’t true,” he said. “It sets up an artificial battle between the bishops’ conference of the United States and the Holy Father, which isn’t true.”
“I don’t like the argument Bishop McElroy used, because it isn’t true,” he added, eliciting a round of applause from the bishops in the hall.
In their document on faithful citizenship, the bishops noted that abortion in the U.S. means the “ongoing destruction of over one million innocent human lives each year by abortion.”
Pope Francis said that McElroy and the other 15 new voting-age cardinals will be created on Saturday, August 27.
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