When last we checked in on Pope Francis, leader of the 1.4 billion-strong Catholic Church, he was unveiling a Vatican nativity scene that depicted the Baby Jesus resting in the manger atop a Hamas kaffiyeh. RedState reported at the time:

The heretical nativity scene was apparently organized by the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs, which is an arm of the PLO. The artists who created it, Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi, are "Palestinians" from Bethlehem.

Luckily, common sense prevailed, and the nativity scene was removed. The pope, however, continues to outrage many in his flock through his left-leaning stances and often skewed liturgical teachings. His latest move is sure to raise even more eyebrows as he names the very left-leaning Cardinal Robert McElroy as the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., overseeing parishes in all of D.C. proper and parts of Maryland.

McElroy, whose previous assignment was in San Diego, has made headlines in recent years for supporting Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, two of the nation's biggest supporters of abortion, receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist. 

In defending communion for pro-abortion politicians, McElroy argued in a May 2021 piece for the Jesuit magazine America that the Eucharist is “being weaponized” for political purposes.

“The proposal to exclude pro-choice Catholic political leaders from the Eucharist is the wrong step. It will bring tremendously destructive consequences — not because of what it says about abortion, but because of what it says about the Eucharist,” he said.

McElroy argued in the piece that the church cannot test each individual Catholic for rejecting a significant teaching.

The Catholic Church teaches that a person must not receive the Holy Eucharist if they are knowingly in a state of grave sin; they may again receive communion once they've confessed their sins in the sacrament of Reconciliation. There's a catch here, though: Once you've received forgiveness for a sin, you are challenged to no longer commit that sin.

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It's pretty hard to argue that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are not abortion devotees since they very publicly and knowingly advocate for killing the unborn. In advocating for Biden and Pelosi to continue receiving communion despite their ardent pro-abortion stances, McElroy simultaneously denigrates the holiness of the Eucharist and gives tacit approval for Catholics to receive communion while in a state of sin. 

Pope Francis had tasked Cardinal Donald Wuerl, a previous archbishop of Washington, D.C., to identify a successor to the outgoing archbishop, Cardinal Wilton Gregory. McElroy was initially rejected as a candidate, but the Pope reconsidered after Donald Trump won a second term. McElroy, who has a PhD. in political science, is apparently being sent to DC to keep the Trump administration in check.

In his first remarks since being appointed, McElroy made it clear that he is against mass deportations, arguing it could be "incompatible with Catholic doctrine."

“The Catholic Church teaches that a country has the right to control its borders. And our nation’s desire to do that is a legitimate effort,” Cardinal McElroy said Monday, shortly after being introduced as Washington’s eighth archbishop during an online press conference at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle amid an unusually heavy snowstorm in the nation’s capital.

“At the same time, we are called always to have a sense of the dignity of every human person. And thus, plans which have been talked about at some levels of having a wider indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine. So we’ll have to see what emerges in the administration.”

The McElroy appointment is not the big "gotcha" moment that the left thinks it is. While the Pope may think he's in a strategic chess match with Donald Trump, Trump likely doesn't even know—or care—that a game is being played with the Vatican. Some say the Pope is trolling Trump, but you can't out-troll the incoming president. 

Unfortunately, the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has long been overseen by lefty Cardinals, with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a child predator, being the most infamous of the bunch.

After McCarrick came two archbishops who followed in his ideological footsteps: Donald Wuerl and Wilton Gregory. Both are members of the progressive wing of the hierarchy, although Wuerl—who covered up McCarrick’s crimes—often fooled people into thinking he was a moderate or even a conservative prelate. Cardinal McElroy is firmly in this camp as well and so continues the progressive leanings of this office. 

Pope Francis and Cardinal McElroy may want to think twice about starting a war with Donald Trump, as American Catholics turned out in droves to vote for the president-elect. Catholics are as tired as most of the woke nonsense overtaking their institutions, and they certainly don't want to hear it in the pews on Sunday.