Beloved ex-Belleville bishop set to retire, Vatican announces

Pope Francis on Monday formalized the retirement of Cardinal Wilton Gregory by announcing his successor as archbishop of Washington, D.C.

Gregory previously served as the seventh bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Belleville from 1993 to 2004. He was elevated by the pope to the rank of cardinal in 2020, the first African American to hold that title.

At age 77, Gregory is two years past the normal retirement age for Catholic bishops.

Cardinal Robert McElroy, who has been the bishop of San Diego since 2015, was tabbed as Gregory’s replacement in the nation’s capital. According to The Associated Press and Catholic media, McElroy is viewed as a liberally minded and progressive Catholic, similar to both Pope Francis and Gregory.

Gregory came to the Diocese of Belleville from his hometown of Chicago in 1993. He served as Belleville’s bishop until 2005, when he became the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

In Southern Illinois, he’s still known as a down-to-earth and beloved pastoral leader who guided the Catholic Diocese of Belleville through one of its most difficult periods.

While still in Belleville, Gregory served as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as the crisis of sex abuse by Catholic clergy was escalating, according to an Archdiocese of Atlanta biography.

In 2002, the council of bishops established procedures for addressing allegations that priests were sexually abusing children in their “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” under Gregory’s leadership.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a St. Louis-based victims group, said nearly 10 percent of Belleville’s priests were removed in the early 1990s, most of them before Gregory became bishop.

Gregory characterized his tenure in Belleville as a training ground for the “wild ride” he’s experienced as a church leader.

“In all candor, when I went to the Diocese of Belleville as bishop at the end of ‘93 and the beginning of ‘94, it was my first exposure to the wonderful faith life of rural and small-town America,” he told the BND. “... I was a city kid. I had to learn to love and appreciate the great gifts of faith and kindness and charity of rural Catholics, and I did, and I consider those almost 11 years as a great training ground.

“It was the first time I was a diocesan bishop, so I was obviously given the responsibility, the pastoral responsibility, of caring for the people of God in the diocese as their bishop, not their auxiliary bishop, but as their bishop, and it taught me so much about the level of faith that I found there in that wonderful community, and I praise God for it because it helped to form me and shape me to be the bishop that I am.”

Not long after his appointment to Washington, D.C. in 2020, Gregory issued sharp criticism of President Donald Trump for a staged visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Law enforcement authorities used gas and rubber bullets to break up a crowd that had gathered on Lafayette Square, near the White House, to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. A short time later, photos and videos emerged, showing Trump posing with a Bible in front of the church. Gregory called the stunt “reprehensible.”

He also was critical of President Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic who attended Mass at Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is the seat of the Washington diocese. On the CBS political talk show “Face the Nation,” Gregory called Biden a “cafeteria Catholic” who ignores some tenets of the faith, often “to his political advantage.”

The bishop and Democratic president also have been at odds over abortion.

The Archdiocese of Washington includes the District of Columbia and five Maryland counties of Montgomery, Prince George’s, St. Mary’s, Calvert, and Charles. It has a total population of 3,050,847, of which 671,187 are Catholic.

McElroy, 70, is considered one of Francis’ most progressively like-minded allies to head the Catholic Church in the U.S. capital at the start of the second Trump Administration.

Francis has long had his eye on McElroy, making him bishop of San Diego in 2015 and then elevating him as a cardinal in 2022.

McElroy has been one of a minority of U.S. bishops harshly criticizing the campaign to exclude Catholic politicians who support abortion rights from Communion, a campaign Francis has publicly criticized by insisting that bishops must be pastors, not politicians.

He has also questioned why the U.S. bishops’ conference, which has leaned conservative in its leadership, consistently insists on identifying abortion as its “preeminent” priority. He has questioned why greater prominence was not given to issues such as racism, poverty, immigration and climate change.

He has also expressed support for LGBTQ+ youth and denounced the bullying often directed at them, further aligning himself with Francis’ priorities as pope.

McElroy’s appointment to Washington comes just a few weeks after Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, nominated Brian Burch as U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Burch, president and co-founder of the advocacy group CatholicVote, has criticized Francis and some of his policies on social media.

Francis made the appointment ahead of his final meeting with President Joe Biden, who is making a last foreign trip to Italy this week. Biden emerged from a 2021 meeting with Francis by saying the pope told him to continue receiving Communion despite his position on abortion.

Biden later received the sacrament at a Rome church.