CALIFORNIA
Whispers in the Loggia
March 2, 2015
It’s being called the “Cupich appointment of the West,” and not without reason – resolving the highest-profile vacancy on the current US docket, at Roman Noon tomorrow the Pope is slated to name Bishop Robert McElroy, the 61 year-old auxiliary of San Francisco known as one of the Stateside bench’s most outspoken progressives, as the sixth bishop of San Diego and its 1 million Catholics in the nation’s seventh-largest city.
As reports of the appointment circulated for several days, three Whispers ops appraised of the move confirmed the news. Coming just shy of six months since the premature death of Bishop Cirilo Flores after a brief struggle with cancer, as reports here at the time indicated, the succession was indeed fast-tracked given both the relative freshness of the consultations leading up to Flores’ own selection in early 2012 and the diocese’s still-unsettled state from its 2007 bankruptcy amid a torrent of sex-abuse lawsuits, which was settled for $197 million.
While the projections of timeline panned out, the choice of a relatively junior auxiliary – even one hailed as among the “leading intellectual and pastoral lights” of the bench’s rising generation – is a significant surprise. That’s anything but to say, however, that McElroy isn’t ready for prime time – a Harvard undergrad with doctorates from both Stanford (in political science) and the Gregorian (moral theology), the San Diego pick served as vicar-general to his mentor, the retired San Francisco Archbishop John Quinn, before 14 years as a pastor during the tenure of then-Archbishop William Levada.
Beyond his assisting role until now in “The City,” the bishop is notably a member of the influential Administrative Committee of the USCCB – the 30-prelate group that is the body’s ultimate authority outside of the plenary session – as the regional delegate for the sprawling turf comprising California, Nevada, Utah and Hawaii (i.e. the area covered by the Golden State’s twin provinces).
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