Cardinal Cupich: 10 years as archbishop of Chicago

A decade ago, Cardinal Cupich arrived in Chicago as its archbishop, the first since Chicago became an archdiocese to take over for a surviving ordinary. Since then, he has worked to keep the church in Chicago vital and united during a time of deep division in the nation. The following is an overview in roughly chronological order of Cardinal Cupich’s first 10 years in Chicago, as reported in Chicago Catholic and often in his own words.

Arrival and installation as archbishop

When then-Bishop Cupich was introduced as the next archbishop of Chicago on Sept. 20, 2014, he said at a press conference that the appointment “humbled and encouraged” him, and that his priority as archbishop was to be attentive to the way God works through the people of the archdiocese.

Cardinal Cupich had served as bishop of Spokane, Washington, since 2010. Before that, he had been bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, since 1998.

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, one of nine children, and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Omaha in 1975. He served as pastor of two parishes there. His ministry also took him to Washington, D.C., where he served as secretary to the Apostolic Nunciature from 1981 to 1987, and to Columbus, Ohio, where he was president/rector of the Pontifical College Josephinum from 1989 to 1996.

When he was named the 14th ordinary and ninth archbishop of Chicago, friends and former colleagues described Cardinal Cupich as a leader with the intellectual gifts, diplomatic skills and spiritual rootedness the position required.

“I think it all stems from his very deep sense of prayer and his very deep relationship with our Lord,” said Msgr. William O’Connell, who served as one of two episcopal vicars under Cardinal Cupich in Rapid City. O’Connell, a Chicago native who attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary, spoke with Chicago Catholic in 2014; he died in 2015.

Cardinal Cupich was installed as archbishop of Chicago at the beginning of a Mass Nov. 18, 2014.

Immigrants and immigration reform

From the day he was introduced as the next archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Cupich has been advocating for comprehensive immigration reform and for compassion and care for immigrants.

In April 2023, he washed the feet of Venezuelan refugees on Holy Thursday.

In a March 13 Chicago Catholic column, Cardinal Cupich praised the work being done by Catholic Charities, parishes and other Catholic organizations to welcome more than 50,000 migrants who have arrived since August 2022.

“What have we discovered in offering these services?” he wrote. “We have found that these people are highly motivated to work and move on. Every day we witness with admiration how those who have secured employment leave for their jobs early in the morning and come home late at night. They want to improve the lot of their families and are willing to sacrifice a great deal for them.”

Catholic-Muslim dialogue

On Feb. 8, 2016, Cardinal Cupich was named the Catholic co-chair of the National Catholic Muslim Dialogue launched by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

Leaders from Catholic and Muslim communities gathered at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in March 2017 and agreed to find ways to accompany one another and work together at a moment when all religion is under threat from an increasingly secular and even anti-religious society.

At another dialogue session at CTU in March 2019, leaders reflected on a joint document on human fraternity signed by Pope Francis and Sheik el-Tayeb, a leading religious authority for many Sunni Muslims around the world, on Feb. 4, 2019, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

In April 2022, Cardinal Cupich attended an interfaith iftar, or dinner breaking the Ramadan fast, hosted by the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago and received an award from the council recognizing his “exemplary commitment to Catholic-Muslim relations in Chicago.”

Consistory

On the eve of the closing of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, then-Archbishop Cupich was among 17 men Pope Francis elevated to the College of Cardinals during a service at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on Nov. 19, 2016.

The pope presented each of them with the symbols of the cardinal — a red biretta, a red zucchetto and a ring.

The pope also assigns each cardinal a titular church in Rome. Cardinal Cupich’s titular Roman church is the Basilica of St. Bartholomew on Tiber Island, which had previously been assigned to Cardinal Francis George.

The assignment of a church signifies that they now are members of the clergy of the pope’s diocese.

During his homily, Pope Francis emphasized the importance of forgiveness.

“Here we find ourselves confronted with one of the very hallmarks of Jesus’ message, where its power and secret are concealed. Here too is the source of our joy, the power of our mission and our preaching of the good news. My enemy is someone I must love,” he said. “In God’s heart there are no enemies. God only has sons and daughters. We are the ones who raise walls, build barriers and label people.”

Renew My Church

In February 2016, Cardinal Cupich invoked St. Francis Assisi and his call from God to “rebuild his church” when the cardinal announced Renew My Church, the ongoing initiative to strengthen and support vital communities of faith across the parishes of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In his Chicago Catholic column explaining the effort, Cardinal Cupich outlined his hope that parishes would bring people to Christ and parishioners would support one another in knowing Christ more deeply.

The first phase, which was mostly structural, included consolidating and closing some parishes to allow every parish to have the resources — including financial and personnel — it needs to flourish.

In 2023, Renew My Church entered a new phase, one of spiritual renewal for parishes and parishioners, who have been called to collaborate more in parish leadership and serve as missionary disciples who will evangelize their communities.

Gun violence

Throughout his time in the Archdiocese of Chicago, Cardinal Cupich has spoken out against gun violence, both in the archdiocese and around the country.

On April 14, 2017, Cardinal Cupich led a Good Friday Walk for Peace in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Among the hundreds of participants were civic and faith leaders, members of the Chicago police and fire departments and many community members.

“This is the way we should be,” he said that day. “We want the world today to know that this is Chicago, that we want to work together.”

While the cardinal acknowledged the tradition of hunting in American culture, he said there is no reason for military-style weapons to be accessible to the public.

“When the hunting sport is human prey, we have to take action,” the cardinal said. Later, speaking to the media, he added, “We don’t need military weapons in our society. We’re not at war with one another.”

In a statement issued July 4, 2022, hours after a gunman opened fire from a rooftop on the crowds gathered for a parade in Highland Park, the cardinal wrote:

“Gun violence is a life issue. We must continue to pray that all our officials, elected and unelected alike, will redouble their commitment to keeping safe the people they have sworn to serve.

In April 2023, Cardinal Cupich and then-Auxiliary Bishop Jeffrey Grob contributed enough money from their personal resources to buy back 100 guns at a buy-back event at Most Blessed Trinity Parish in Waukegan.

International summit on protecting minors

Cardinal Cupich was one of four members of the organizing committee of the Vatican’s Feb. 21-24, 2019, summit on the protection of minors.

The summit brought together Pope Francis and 190 church leaders for four days of listening to addresses, survivors’ testimonies, discussions in small groups, a penitential liturgy and Mass.

It ended with the announcement of a plan for task forces to help under-resourced bishops’ conferences struggling to come up with strong child-protection norms; planned changes to Canon Law, which took effect in 2021, a lifting of “pontifical secrecy” in clerical sex abuse cases; and an amendment to Pope Francis’ legal ruling “Come una Madre Amorevole” (“As a Loving Mother”), holding bishops accountable.

In May 2019, Pope Francis promulgated “Vox estis lux mundi,” a motu proprio that changed the universal law of the church in order to strengthen its response to allegations of abuse of minors and vulnerable people.

Trip to Auschwitz and Catholic-Jewish relations

In July 2019, Cardinal Cupich traveled to Poland to visit Auschwitz with Fritzie Fritzshall, then-president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie and survivor of the death camp, who died in 2021 at age 91.

When they arrived, Cardinal Cupich wrote in a column, Fritzshall asked him, “How could this happen? How could people turn on their neighbors?”

“Such brutality does not come naturally to human beings; it is taught progressively through the creation of a false narrative about others, which, step by step, is accepted as the new normal,” the cardinal wrote then, noting a “dramatic increase in antisemitism and hate speech.”

In March 2023, the Illinois Holocaust Museum honored Cardinal Cupich with its Survivor Legacy Award. He continued to decry increasing antisemitism, calling on the example of Assisi Bishop Giuseppe Placido Nicolini, who helped Jews escape the Nazis during World War II.

“Even here in Chicago, a city known for religious diversity and tolerance, some Jews tell me they are afraid to show signs of their faith in public,” the cardinal said. “These reports are alarming, but Christians cannot just be alarmed by antisemitism. We must look to the example of Bishop Nicolini and band together in a network of support and protection, each of us doing his or her part to help break down prejudice built on centuries of ignorance and fear and to be willing to raise our voices in the face of hateful acts and speech and say, ‘This is wrong, this must stop.’”

Fordham talk

On Sept. 26, 2023, Cardinal Cupich delivered an address titled “The Bond of Perfection: From a Consistent Ethic of Life to an Integral Ethic of Solidarity,” at Fordham University in New York City.

The talk was sponsored by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture and the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies and expanded on “the consistent ethic of life” proposed by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in a talk delivered at Fordham University 40 years earlier.

In applying Cardinal Bernardin’s vision to the 2020s, Cardinal Cupich mentioned five developments to consider. They were the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade; climate change; the emergence of new technologies; the pontificate of Pope Francis; and the intensification of polarization in the Western world.

Synod on synodality

Cardinal Cupich was appointed as a delegate to the synod on synodality, which concluded in October, in July 2023.

Even before then, he embraced the work of explaining what it means to be a “synodal church,” on the journey together.

In October, as the synod was drawing to a close, he wrote about what he learned about synodality and relationship after spending the past two Octobers in synod meetings.

“My participation in the synod in Rome over the past weeks has helped me understand more fully that the Holy Father is calling for the church to act in a new way, a synodal way, as we take up the mission of Christ,” he said. “That starts by each of us undergoing what the pope calls a ‘relationship conversion.’

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Contributing to this story was Catholic News Service