When I first saw this X post cross my feed, I didn't even need to click on the link to know the archbishop is Chicago's very own liberal, Blase Cupich.
Chicago archbishop says Pope Leo will focus on immigration, drug trade, rising sea levels https://t.co/VWkeGsddUi
— The Hill (@thehill) May 12, 2025
Here's what The Hill writes (emphasis added):
Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, said on Sunday that he thinks Pope Leo XIV will carry forward Francis’s commitment and focus on immigration, climate change and human trafficking.
'I think he’s going to help complete and complement our political agenda,' Cupich told ABC News’s Martha Raddatz in a 'This Week' interview from the Vatican City.
'He’ll still talk a lot about the immigrants as well because he knows about the sufferings of people and the real needs that they have for a better life. And he knows too that people in Oceania, for instance, where the rising sea levels are just … overwhelming those islands, where people are trying to escape,' the archbishop continued.
'He sees the drug trade that’s happening in Central and South America, where there are weapons from the United States going there. He knows that those people need an option. And he’ll call for, I think, as the bishops have in the United States, fixing this broken immigration system,' he added.
Cupich and Martha 'It's Just a Handful of Apartments' Raddatz. A match made in ... well, let's just say it's not made in heaven.
As to 'our' political agenda, which one is that, Bishop?
Because the last time I checked, the business of the Catholic Church was the salvation of souls and not doing the Democratic Party's bidding.
Cupich clearly doesn't, because a CTRL+F search of the words 'salvation' and 'Jesus' in this article yield zero results.
If you thought Cupich was a Jesuit, like the late Pope Francis, it wouldn't surprise me. For a long time, I did, too. Instead, he's a member of the Order of the Holy Cross but it's hard to tell where Cupich begins and the late pope ends.
Cupich was one of the archbishops who gleefully, ruthlessly enacted Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis' apostolic letter that greatly restricted the Latin Mass. It meant that the only Catholic Church in Woodlawn, Christ the King, would offer that mass rarely, if ever. Guess that, too, was part of his political agenda.
In 2022, in a parody of the Babylon Bee, it was Cupich who said Pope Francis would get around to addressing the egregious sex abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in the early 2000s after he talked about the 'bigger fish' of the environment.
Cardinal Cupich is literally beyond parody. This was a Babylon Bee headline from TWELVE DAYS AGO. https://t.co/ELAMyqb0lt Today Cupich says the Pope can't talk about his role in covering up sex abuse because he has bigger fish to fry, like "the environment."
— Jeff Blehar is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) August 28, 2018
That included his role in covering up for abusers -- one of whom remained in Pope Francis' inner Vatican circle until the pontiff died:
I saw earlier that a memo went out to push back on Rupnik stuff post-Burke (“he’s not the only priest to be accused of sex abuse! why focus on him?!”)
— Emily Zanotti 🦝 (@emzanotti) November 30, 2023
This. This is why. Because despite him demanding nuns drink his semen from a chalice, the Vatican can’t end its love affair. https://t.co/bOG3wUPfkb
That seems like a pretty darned big fish to fry, Bishop Cupich.
Much bigger than ... *checks notes* ... plastic straws.
It's no surprise that Martha Raddatz didn't push back on Cupich's clear politicization of the papal office. She, like the rest of the media, will lap this stuff up as they continue their clamor for a progressive pope that will turn Catholicism into the morally therapeutic deism wing of the Democratic Party.
But this interview reads like Cupich, who will thankfully, blessedly, never be Pope cosplaying as the Holy Father and hoping to use his Chicago connection to sway the Vatican.
I hope Pope Leo XIV has the smarts to rebuke Cupich and remind him who, in fact, is boss.
