Blase Joseph Cupich (/ˈsuːpɪtʃ/ SOO-pitch;[2] born March 19, 1949) is an American Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of Chicago since 2014.

Cupich then studied at Saint John Vianney Seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, obtaining his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy degree in 1971.

[1] After his 1975 ordination, the archdiocese assigned Cupich as both associate pastor at St. Margaret Mary Parish and instructor at Paul VI High School in Omaha.

His dissertation was entitled "Advent in the Roman Tradition: An Examination and Comparison of the Lectionary Readings as Hermeneutical Units in Three Periods".

[9] Cupich was installed and consecrated at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City by Archbishop Harry Flynn on September 21, 1998.

In 2011, Cupich discouraged priests and seminarians in his diocese from demonstrating in front of Planned Parenthood clinics or supporting 40 Days for Life, an anti-abortion movement.

[20][21] He wrote favorably of moving from an ad orientem to a versus populum direction of the priest in the mass; he lamented those who did not accept the changes of the post-Vatican II Roman Missal; he wrote favorably about receiving the eucharist under both species and mass in the vernacular, non-Western inculturation into the liturgy, lay participation in the liturgy as a litmus test of active participation, and the simplification of rubrics.

In April 2012, Cupich supported the decision of Gonzaga University to invite Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu to speak at its graduation ceremonies and receive an honorary degree.

On September 20, 2014, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal George as archbishop of Chicago and named Cupich to succeed him.

He appointed the seminary rector, director of the metropolitan tribunal, and chancellor, while confirming the Reverend Ronald Hicks as vicar general and Betsy Bohlen, formerly the CFO, as chief operating officer.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune in August 2015, during the Planned Parenthood 2015 undercover videos controversy, Cupich reiterated Cardinal George's call for "our commitment as a nation to a consistent ethic of life".

He wrote that "commerce in the remains of defenseless children" is "particularly repulsive" and that, "We should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

"[31] Reverend Raymond J. de Souza, in the National Catholic Register, criticized what he claimed was Cupich's "inconsistent" practice of the "consistent life ethic", offered by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in the mid-1980s, arguing that it "mainly serve[s] to downplay the urgency of the abortion question".

[33] Cupich was supportive of the motu proprio Traditionis custodes for promoting a return to a unified, post-Vatican II Ordinary Form of the Mass.

[34] On July 16, 2022, it was leaked that Cupich was planning on shutting down the parishes in Chicago operated by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest which celebrates Mass according to the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal.

Cupich was reportedly planning to revoke the ministry of the priest belonging to the institute to operate in the diocese starting on August 1, 2022.

"[41] In September 2015, Pope Francis named Cupich to participate in the synod of bishops in Rome in October 2015, adding him to those proposed by the USCCB.

[43] Cupich identified himself with a pastoral approach that begins with encountering each person's specific circumstances and highlighted the importance of conscience.

[46] At the consistory held on that day, he received the rank of cardinal-priest and was assigned the titular church of San Bartolomeo all'Isola in Rome.

In August 2018, Archbishop Carlo Viganò, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States, released an 11-page letter describing a series of warnings to the Vatican regarding sexual misconduct by then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

"[52]In an August 2018 interview, Cupich said the language of the Viganò letter seemed political:"It was so scattershot that it was hard to read if it was ideological in some ways, or it was payback to others for personal slights that he had because there were some people who in his past he felt had mistreated him."

Cupich is the Catholic co-chair of the National Catholic-Muslim Dialogue, sponsored by the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the USCCB.

"[64] Two years later, as South Dakota voters considered a referendum that would ban abortion except to save the mother's life, Cupich called for "public dialogue ... marked by civility and clarity".

Cupich wrote on January 22, 2013, referencing the murder of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a few weeks earlier, that"The truth will win out and we have to believe that a nation whose collective heart can break and grieve for babies slaughtered in Newtown has the capacity and God's grace to one day grieve for the babies killed in the womb.

which he criticized in detail: By uncoupling human dignity from the solidarity it implies, libertarians move in a direction that not only has enormous consequences for the meaning of economic life and the goal of politics in a world of globalization, but in a direction which is inconsistent with Catholic Social Teaching, particularly as it is developed by Pope Francis.As an alternative to libertarianism, Cupich advocated some of Francis' views, including his "different approach to how we know and learn" by "making sure that ideas do dialogue with reality" and his call "for a shift from an economics of exclusion to a culture of encounter and the need for accompaniment", in which, he explains, "One encounters another, not one self.

Francis' critique of contemporary capitalism is, in his view, "tethered to a rich tradition of ... challenging economic and political approaches which fall short of placing human dignity in all its fullness as the priority."

Shortly before the U.S. presidential election of 2008, Cupich published an essay in America Magazine on the question of race that said:[70] As we draw near an election day on which one of the major party candidates for president is for the first time a person of African-American ancestry, we should be able to do so with a sense that whatever the outcome, America has crossed another threshold in healing the wounds that racism has inflicted on our nation's body politic for our entire history.

However, in view of recent media reports regarding race-based voting, this potentially healing moment could turn into the infliction of one more wound if racism appears to determine the outcome.

[R]acism is a sin.Before the November 2012 referendum on the legalization of same-sex marriage in Washington State, Cupich wrote a pastoral letter on the subject.

It is also a compassion forged in reaction to tragic national stories of violence against homosexuals, of verbal attacks that demean their human dignity, and of suicides by teens who have struggled with their sexual identity or have been bullied because of it.