On the day Congress certified Donald Trump’s 2024 election as president, Pope Francis named Cardinal Robert W. McElroy to become the new archbishop of Washington, D.C. It was a historic and well-timed appointment.

During the Biden years, there was an unusual closeness between the president and the Pope. In one of his final acts, Joe Biden bestowed on Pope Francis the Presidential Medal of Freedom calling him “the People’s Pope.” In his citation, Biden lauded the pontiff for being a “loving pastor” whose mission of “serving the poor has never ceased.”

But the fraternal relations between Washington and the Vatican are about to undergo a difficult test.

Donald Trump has nominated Brian Burch, an outspoken critic of Pope Francis, as the new U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Burch, a Catholic activist, has criticized the Pope’s treatment of his critics and mocked his “progressive Catholic cheerleading.”

The selection of Robert W. McElroy to become the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., highlights Pope Francis’s call that “All are invited. Everyone inside.” For Cardinal McElroy “everyone” means the “radical inclusion” of gay and divorced and remarried Catholics in the life of the Catholic........

© The Hill