Pope Francis on Monday named Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, bishop of San Diego, the next Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, moving one of his most vocal allies on immigration to one of the most prominent posts in the American church.

The move, announced in the Vatican’s daily bulletin, comes at a critical time two weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump and sends a signal about Pope Francis’ priorities. Many powerful American Catholics, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have joined Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-abortion efforts.

Cardinal McElroy (70) is a longtime supporter of the pope’s pastoral program, and is known for regularly speaking about the inclusion of migrants, women and LGBTQ people in the Catholic Church and in the United States.

He will succeed Cardinal Wilton Gregory, 77, the first African-American to be named a cardinal. member of the highest governing body of the church.

In December, as Mr. Trump promised crack down on immigration again, Cardinal McElroy and 11 other California bishops issued a statement in support of “our migrant brothers and sisters”.

“We want to assure you that we and our mother, the Church, stand by you in these days of anxiety,” they wrote, promising to “advocate for your dignity and family unity.”

His presence in Washington will contrast with that of Mr. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and thrived hard-line anti-immigrant agenda in the campaign last year. Along with Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance has called for mass deportations, promised to end legal immigration programs and spread unfounded rumours that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are stealing and eating pets.

Mr. Vance represents the traditionalist wing of the churchwhich has grown stronger in Republican circles as it fights the rise of secularism.

As Bishop of the Diocese of San Diego, along the border with Mexico, Cardinal McElroy has a history of dealing with immigrants, who represent a significant constituency for the Catholic Church, both globally and in the US

As an undergraduate student at Harvard University, he studied with Oscar Handlin, a distinguished scholar which changed public attitudes about the role of immigration in American history.

Shortly after Mr. Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Cardinal McElroy, then the new bishop of San Diego appointed by Pope Francis, he said at a Catholic immigration conference that it was “unthinkable” to stand by as Mr Trump promised to deport millions of immigrants.

He described Mr. Trump’s policy as “an act of injustice that would stain our national honor in the same way as the progressive dispossession of the Native American peoples of the United States and the burial of the Japanese.”

He too spoke when President Trump tried to end a program that protects against deportation about 700,000 immigrants, known as Dreamers, who entered the country as children.

While other Catholic bishops have sought to make abortion their top issue, Cardinal McElroy has often argued that abortion is only one of several key priorities of Catholic moral teaching. When conservative bishops targeted President Biden, America’s second Catholic president, with a proposal in 2021 to deny politicians communion because of their support for abortion rights, he push backsaying that under such a proposal the sacrament, “which wants to make us one, will become a sign of division for millions of Catholics”.

Cardinal McElroy argued “radical inclusion” women and LGBTQ people in church life and leadership, to the outrage of conservatives. In 2022, Pope Francis he made him a cardinaland therefore has the right to vote on the Pope’s successor.

Former leaders of the Archdiocese of Washington have managed the inherently political nature of the installation in their own ways. A scholar of American history by training, Cardinal McElroy is a rare prelate who holds a doctorate in political science from Stanford University, and has not shied away from contemporary controversies, neither in the church nor in the nation.

“Our political society is poisoned by a tribal order that drains our energy as a people and threatens our democracy,” he wrote in America magazineJesuit publication, 2023. “And that poison entered destructively into the life of the Church.”

Although the Archdiocese of Washington is home to about half as many Catholics as the Diocese of San Diego, it is one of the most prominent places in the country. The archdiocese includes the nation’s capital, as well as major institutions such as the Catholic University of America and the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in North America.

Cardinal Gregory moved to Washington in 2019 from Atlanta, where he was the archbishop, after a tumultuous period when church leaders in Washington were at the center of America’s sexual abuse crisis. Pope Francis elevated him to the College of Cardinals in 2020, at a time of widespread calls for racial justice across the country and within the Church.

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting.