By Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing - Which brings me, as you may have been waiting for, to the Vatican’s appointment this week of San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy as cardinal archbishop of Washington D.C. There are rumors that previous occupants of that post – including Cardinals Wuerl and Gregory along with the papal nuncio to the United States and several figures in Rome – opposed that appointment... McElroy’s appointment is an oddity. He is a native of California, has spent almost all of his priestly life there (none in Washington), and has no great claim to being the best – or even a good – choice for the new post, other than he’s long been a progressive social justice advocate... If one were given to speculation, it might be thought that Pope Francis was persuaded to appoint him as a counterweight to the return of Donald Trump.