Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago hailed “the prophetic voice and the legacy” of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the archbishop of Chicago from 1982 to 1996.
In an October 16 address in Trento, Italy—Cardinal Bernardin’s ancestral region—Cardinal Cupich said that Cardinal Bernardin’s “reading of the signs of our times led him to the conclusion that it was useless to address issues such as abortion, capital punishment, nuclear proliferation, use of military force, or anything else separately.”
“The moral framework of a ‘consistent ethic of life’ championed by the cardinal is essential today, at a time when deep social divisions set people against one another in extreme ways,” Cardinal Cupich continued.
Cardinal Cupich’s address was swiftly republished by the Vatican newspaper and by Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication.