By Joshua McElwee
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Monday named a Catholic cardinal who has criticized Donald Trump's political agenda as the new leader for the Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., days before Trump is set to be inaugurated as U.S. president.
Cardinal Robert McElroy, 70, has been the bishop of San Diego since 2015. He will replace Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who has led the archdiocese of Washington since 2019 and is retiring.
McElroy sharply criticized Trump's plan during his first administration to launch a mass deportation campaign targeting millions of immigrants living in the United States.
He called on Americans to "disrupt" those plans in a 2017 speech and later told a Catholic magazine that Catholics "simply can't stand by and watch [immigrants] get deported".
"It's a bold move," Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who has followed the Francis papacy closely, said of McElroy's appointment.
Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia, noted the announcement came on the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by rioters who hoped to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.
He called it "a statement to the halls of power in D.C. and boardrooms in America".
McElroy is also an outspoken ally of Francis among the U.S. Catholic bishops, who are largely divided over the pope's pastoral agenda.
He has taken progressive positions on issues such as being more welcoming toward LGBTQ Catholics and has called for the ordination of women as deacons -- ordained ministers who, unlike priests, cannot celebrate the Mass.
McElroy, who was made a cardinal by Francis in 2022, is originally from San Francisco.
The cardinal has a doctorate in theology from Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, as is usual for Catholic prelates. He also earned a doctorate in politics from Stanford University, where his dissertation focused on American foreign policy.
Gregory, aged 77, was the first African American leader of the Catholic Church in Washington, and the first Black U.S. cardinal.
He was known for a low-key approach and rebuffed calls from some conservative Catholics to deny communion to Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, such as Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
McElroy has also rebuffed such calls.