Cardinal McElroy Gets Political On Immigration In First Public Appearance Since DC Installation, by Madalaine Elhabbal

During his remarks, Cardinal McElroy sharply criticized the administration’s foreign aid suspension as ‘unconscionable through any prism of Catholic thought.’

Washington, D.C.’s newly minted archbishop, Cardinal Robert McElroy, made his first public appearance since his installment at a conference on immigration policy Monday, offering a “spiritual and moral” reflection on the “American situation at this moment.”

Appealing to the teachings of Pope Francis as articulated in his recent letter to the American bishops and his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Cardinal McElroy centered his remarks on the parable of the good Samaritan.

“We’ve got to remember the call of Jesus is constant, to always be attentive to the needs and the suffering that lie around us, to perceive it, and then to act,” he said, comparing the plight of migrants to the robbers’ victim in the parable of the good Samaritan.

Following the Holy Father’s reflection on the same parable, McElroy asserted that “each of us victimizes others consciously in a variety of different ways” and that “when we place our own interests and well-being ahead of others and cause harm, we must be in touch with that side of ourselves with the darkness, which is the robber inside every one of us.”

He continued: “That is one of the great calls of Christian conversion, to root out that darkness, to face it where it lies and to fight against it always.”

The March 24 event, titled “Catholic Social Teaching and Work with Migrants and Refugees at a Time of Uncertainty,” was hosted in Washington, D.C., by Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) USA and the Center for Migration Studies of New York.

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