CHICAGO (AP) — Catholics in Chicago are anticipating Saturday’s announcement from the archdiocese that a successor to Cardinal Francis George has been chosen.
Bishop Blase (BLAHZ’) Cupich (SOO’-pihch), a moderate who has called for civility in the culture wars, will replace George, who has been battling cancer, in November, according to an earlier announcement by the papal ambassador to the U.S.
Outside downtown Chicago’s ornate Archbishop Quigley Center, where the archdiocese was to hold a news conference Saturday morning, one Catholic woman said she didn’t know much about Cupich, of Spokane, Washington, but that she was confident the pope had made the right choice.
“I’m sure in his wisdom, Pope Francis” has made “the right move,” said Katherine D’Amaro of Atlanta, who was visiting Chicago for a wedding. In particular, she said she supports the pope’s “devotion to the poor” and his “conservative positions on matters of life and marriage.”
The Archdiocese of Chicago is the third-largest, and one of the most important, dioceses in the country, serving 2.2 million parishioners.
George, 77, is especially admired in the church’s conservative wing as an intellectual who took an aggressive stand against abortion and gay marriage.
Cupich has not been among the harder-line bishops and instead has called for a “return to civility” in conversations on divisive social policies.
