In a wide-ranging interview with Vatican Media, Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, calls for restraint to avoid unnecessary military escalation abroad and prevent things from quickly spiraling out of control. He also urges overcoming polarization and protecting the human dignity of all peoples in the United States, in a way that ensures law and human rights are not opposed, but united.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
Once your open the door with attacks, it's very hard to close it, and things can get out of control very quickly.
In a wide-ranging interview with Vatican Media, Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, gave this warning, while reflecting on tensions abroad and domestically.
After the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks that hit Tehran and several Iranian cities on Saturday, Iran launched retaliatory strikes on various areas in the Gulf region, hitting airports, buildings, ports, and several civilian structures, particularly in cities such as Doha, Manama, and Kuwait City. During the Angelus on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV said that “faced with the possibility of a tragedy of enormous proportions,” he made a heartfelt appeal to the parties involved "to assume the moral responsibility to stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss!”
During the conversation, Cardinal Cupich reflects on the dramatic events in the Middle East, and the world at large, and the power of the Pope's voice and call for moral responsibility. He also reflects on division and the Pope's reception and ability to unify back home in the United States, amid other challenges, especially at the borders. Finally, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago reflects on what the Windy City's offering the world its first Pope means to Chicago and the effect it is having on the Church.
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Vatican News: Your Eminence, what is Pope Leo’s contribution to peace? The Holy Father made an impassioned appeal on Sunday at the Angelus address. How significant is his voice in today's global tensions?
Cardinal Blase Cupich: What the Holy Father is doing is simply recalling the principles by which nations have agreed since the Second World War to deal with tensions and conflicts and disputes. We have had over this period of time, these eighty years, a way and ability, through the United Nations and other bodies, to respect human rights, but also the sovereignty of nations as disputes are in many ways taken up. What the Holy Father is doing is trying to recall us back to that, so we do not lose that all. In fact, there is a threat that we are losing that consensus. That's an important role that he is playing here. I think he is speaking on behalf of many people who are worried about what happens when that consensus breaks down.
With the recent events in the Middle East, the world is living through days of great tension and great fear. How are you experiencing these days? And what is your prayer at this time?
Well, I joined Cardinal [Joseph] Tobin [Archbishop of Newark] and Cardinal [Robert] McElroy [of Washington D.C.] in making a statement about these very issues at the time in which the United States was taking action or threatening action, for instance, in Greenland and what it did in Venezuela. We predicted that, in fact, more would happen if we didn't change course. And it is having an impact on people's lives. Almost a thousand people now have been killed in this latest intervention with Iran. We're also seeing the use of weapons as a way by which we solve our difficulties. When we begin to take on that approach, we are going down a road that's very hard to come back from. We see that more and more in this particular moment. So, I think people are afraid. They have no idea how this is going to end and things can get out of control very quickly.
And as you had alluded to, today many people perhaps are accepting that war has once again become somewhat of a normal way of resolving international disputes. What would you say to these people?
I would say we have been down that road as a world in the past. Let's remember the First World War started with an assassination of the Archduke in Sarajevo. Then it blew up into a great war when Franz Josef declared war on behalf of the Austrian Empire. He thought it would be a very quick solution to a problem. Well, it turned out to be years of terrible conflict in which millions of people were killed. So, once you open that door, it's very hard to close it.
In your view, Your Eminence, is it legitimate to launch military attacks against a sovereign country and under what conditions?
I think that it is very questionable on why we would do that if there is no immediate threat that's there that has to be nullified. As far as I understand and seeing that there was no immediate threat that was part of what was happening in this country. We have been told that the nuclear capabilities of Iran, the Iranian government have been neutralized by a bombing that took place months ago. And so, the sovereignty of a nation is very important. We have the same issue with regard to the war in Ukraine. When in fact that principle of the sovereignty of a nation is violated, then we can make any excuse to go ahead and wage war. That is a principle that we have to safeguard and part of the consensus that we had since the Second World War.
Ten days after Pope Leo XIV gave his address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, as you had mentioned, you and two other American Cardinals issued that joint statement rejecting war and urging US foreign policy to be grounded in peace, human dignity, and religious liberty. The letter suggested that events in Venezuela, Ukraine, Greenland raise fundamental questions about military force and the meaning of peace. With the latest attacks in the Middle East, what role should the Catholic Church play in promoting diplomacy over escalation?
We have of course a full diplomatic effort that goes on through our diplomatic stations throughout the world, and that is so very important. Not only in terms of bringing people together, but also providing us information, firsthand information, which in fact is key right now. And the Holy Father mentioned this in his address to the Diplomatic Corps on January 9th. At the heart of it, at the core, was that line in which he said we are entering a period of relativism where truth now then becomes a matter of opinion. It's reduced to opinion. And if we are not committed to really saying what's true, then I think we're going to live in a world of illusion. And so, the Holy See, the Holy Father can call the rest of the world to acknowledge what's really true here rather than going by opinion or fake news as people call it.
American society and even the Church seem rather polarized. How can the Church be or become a force for unity rather than division? And is Pope Leo helping foster greater unity?
I think that's a very important question. The three Cardinals when we made our statement earlier in the year, we decided that in fact, we wanted to give our people the language on how they should understand what's happening. I think that's what the Holy Father is doing as well. Because once you begin to, in fact, just attack personalities or individuals, you lose that ground. What we can do as a service to our people is to help them understand what's happening, to give them the language by which they can see and frame what these issues are about, and what's at stake whenever we ignore the principles of living in this world for the common good. Then in fact, if we can do all of that and give [this to] our people, then we can make headway. And I think we can break through that polarization. It's a matter of helping our people understand what's really happening. That is an important contribution.
In recent months, The US Church has often found itself having to intervene on the US government's migration policies, raising its voice in the defense of migrants. What principles do you wish to reaffirm?
Well, at the center is something you alluded to already, and that is respect for human dignity. That's the core principle. Human dignity has to be respected not in the way only in which people are rounded up, but also human dignity is an issue when you break apart families, when you don't respect the fact that people who have been in the United States for many years without documents contributed in many ways to the livelihood not only of their family but of society in which you also demean them by language that dehumanizes them. Then you violate human dignity and that's why we raised our voice. There was a line in particular in the November statement that our Bishop's Conference made that we oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. That caught the attention of the world and helped our people understand what's at stake here because that's what was happening: the indiscriminate mass deportation of people when in fact you don't take into consideration the various circumstances that brought people here and the fact that we as a country have for too long ignored the need for significant immigration reform.
Migration policies are a political issue that deeply divides public opinion. What is the path to holding together respect for the law and respect for the rights of the person?
We've always said that a nation has the obligation and the right to defend it, to defend its borders, and to secure its borders. That's never been an issue for the Church. But at the same time, it can't be done at the expense of undermining the dignity of people. Those two can be held. They're not opposed to each other. They can be held in union. And we have done it in the past. We can make sure that people's rights are not violated, that we don't have to live in fear as we have seen in the United States where communities are torn apart as we saw in Minnesota and where people rise up and say this is wrong to the point where we then begin to have civil unrest in our cities. There's a better way to do this and that's why we have consistently called for the legislators and administration to enact immigration reform that's significant. We can deal with this problem if in fact they do their job.
How should Catholics engage in politics today, especially in a climate where faith is often used in partisan ways?
I think that we have to make sure that nobody compromises the Gospel for a political partisan view. What we bring, however, are the truths of the Gospel. And as I said earlier, what we as leaders of the Church have to do is to help our people know what the language is in which they should discuss these issues. If they use the language of partisan politics or even of a government that wants to secure a particular policy, we're lost. I think we have to look at these issues through the lens of what the Gospel tells us. That's the job of the Bishops, of the teachers of the Church, to remind people who we are, why we say what we do, why we do what we do as Christians based on the core values of the Gospel.
Cardinal Cupich, you are the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, the city where Pope Leo XIV was born and spent a fraction of his life. What does giving a Pope to the Universal Church mean for Chicago? And how has the city, the Windy City, experienced this first year more or less of his pontificate?
Well, I think there's a justifiable pride that we can say we produced a Pope. It's not just the fact that he is from Chicago, but his life in some way was formed by the culture of Chicago where people work hard. They love their families. They appreciate the international flavor of the city itself. For instance, we celebrate Mass in 26 languages in Chicago. All of that is a part of who the Holy Father is. I think that we take great pride in that. We had a celebration in the stadium of the Chicago White Sox on June 14th. Thousands of people showed up for it, some were not even Catholic, just to express pride about the election of the Holy Father. In many ways, it also has given people, especially young people because he addressed young people in a video that he produced that we showed, for them to look at what their faith is all about. We saw for instance during the rite of election just this past week in the four ceremonies that we had, a 20 percent increase in young people from the age of 20 to 35 coming into the Church, electing to be baptized or coming into full communion with the Church. So something is stirring in people. It's the Holy Spirit, but I also think that it's the election of the Holy Father.
Anything else you would like to add, Your Eminence?
I would just want to make sure that we as a world, as Christians in the world, stay close to the Gospel in these very turbulent times. That will be the light for us. We may not know or we may be confused about what is the way forward, but we have to remember that Jesus says, "I am the way." And so, we have to attend to what he has to say here, not to partisan politics, not the diatribe of a particular agenda of a country, but to stay close to what the Gospel tells us. That is our job as members of the hierarchy to tell our people what in fact we really believe and why we believe it. But we can have an influence on world politics, on world actions if we in fact stay close to the Gospel.
