Washington DC Cardinal McElroy Creates Confusion Over Immigration – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

The newly appointed Catholic Archbishop of Washington, D.C., Cardinal Robert McElroy, has been one of President Trump’s harshest critics. On Feb. 9, 2025, during a prayer service for immigrants at San Diego’s St. Joseph’s Cathedral, the Cardinal described the Trump administration’s attempts to deport criminal immigrants as waging a “war of fear and terror.”

Delivering his angry remarks the week before he was to begin his papal assignment in Washington, D.C., Cardinal McElroy has taken every opportunity to condemn the Trump administration for what he called the “massive and indiscriminate deportation” of immigrants. Demanding that those in attendance tell the Trump administration to “Go no further” in what he has described as an “indiscriminate campaign to bring fear into the hearts of every undocumented person, man, woman, mother, child, family in our society,” the Cardinal called on all Catholics to organize against the deportation policies of the current administration. (RELATED: What Cardinal McElroy Gets Wrong on Immigration)

Organized by the San Diego Organizing Project (SDOP), an affiliate of Faith in Action — a Soros-supported organization that describes itself as “the largest U. S. and global faith-based grassroots organizing network” — the prayer service at St. Joseph’s Cathedral and the march that followed had all the hallmarks of its progressive parent organization, Faith in Action. (RELATED: Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros)

Formerly known to Catholics as the progressive PICO Network, Faith in Action describes itself as a “non-partisan, grassroots, faith-based organizing network that works with congregations of all denominations and faith to address issues like racism, economic inequality and social justice.”

The truth is that Faith in Action advocates for progressive policies, including full citizenship for undocumented immigrants, universal health care, criminal justice reform, voter mobilization through “Rise + Vote,” and other leftist initiatives. The Lepanto Institute has provided evidence that Faith in Action has lobbied for “expanding access to full reproductive rights.”  Today, the SDOP proudly displays a photo of Cardinal McElroy on its homepage.

In his collaboration with Faith in Action’s San Diego Organizing Project, Cardinal McElroy engaged in the kind of organizing model developed by Saul Alinsky of the Industrial Areas Foundation. The central component of this model — which has been used by SDOP for decades — is to “challenge” and “hold accountable” through the use of political tension, external actors including prominent politicians like President Trump or wealthy local business people identified by SDOP as exploiting the poor or discouraging unionization in their companies.

It was no surprise to those of us who know of the Marxist tactics of these “grassroots” projects to see that the huge banner of the San Diego Organizing Project was prominently displayed on the altar of St. Joseph’s Cathedral adjacent to the ambo (the stationary podium specifically designed for proclaiming scripture and delivering the homily) where Cardinal McElroy stood flanked by two sacred candles adjacent to the banner.

During the 1990s, the University of San Diego’s Center for Social Research (the Center that I founded and directed from 1993 until 2007) received a million-dollar Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant to address housing affordability in the Linda Vista neighborhood of San Diego. We enlisted the help of the San Diego Organizing Project to assist with the delivery of services in landlord-tenant mediation.

However, tensions emerged when SDOP began to use Alinsky-like tactics like bringing busloads of Linda Vista residents to protest in front of the homes of those they defined as “absentee landlords” living in La Jolla or other elite neighborhoods in San Diego County. The tactic was to embarrass the landlords in front of their affluent neighbors as a way to coerce them to lower the apartment rental prices for residents.

With his move to the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., Cardinal McElroy will have an ally in his war against the Trump administration through the corporate offices of SDOP’s parent organization, Faith in Action. The new executive director of Faith in Action, based in D.C., Bishop Dwayne Royster, shares many of Cardinal McElroy’s goals, having been the executive director of POWER Interfaith of Pennsylvania, where he led a number of social justice campaigns.

According to Faith in Action, Royster brings a range of experience, including pastoring Black congregations in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., founding the Society for Faith and Justice, serving as a local elected official in Pennsylvania, and working as the Faith in Action political director on Capitol Hill.

As pastor of Living Water Church in Philadelphia, Bishop Royster bragged that his Church was inclusive: “Half of the congregation is lesbian, bisexual and transgender and as a congregation, we are allied with that community. We believe we are created in the likeness of God and we don’t have the right to judge each other that way.”

An alliance with Faith in Action is a risky one for Cardinal McElroy in the nation’s capital. It is one thing to ally with Faith in Action’s SDOP in San Diego to attack the Trump administration in such vitriolic terms as he exhibited last February, but it is quite another to create a bully pulpit in Washington, D.C.’s Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle to defame the President and his Cabinet.

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