CHICAGO (IL)
National Catholic Reporter
Dennis Coday | Sep. 19, 2014
The Vatican is to announced Saturday the appointment of Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane as the new archbishop of Chicago, NCR has learned. He will succeed Cardinal Francis George, who has been archbishop of Chicago since May 1997.
Cupich, 65, has been bishop of Spokane, Wash., since September 2003. He served as Bishop of Rapid City, S.D., from 1998 to 2003, and before that he was a priest with the Omaha, Nebr., archdiocese.
At 77, George is two years past the usual retirement age of bishops. He has also been battling cancer. In May, the archdiocese announced that the Vatican’s representative to the U.S. had begun the vetting process to find a replacement and suggested the announcement would be made this fall.
Chicago is the third most populous Catholic diocese in the U.S. and is historically one of the most important. Since the election of Pope Francis in 2013, church watchers have been saying the replacement for George would be the popes most important U.S. appointment because it would be interpreted as sign of the direction Francis wants the American church to take.
Patrick T. Reardon, a life-long Chicago Catholic and a member of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council in Chicago, told NCR in an interview that the greatest challenge facing the next archbishop of Chicago “is how to serve a modern American society that isn’t much interested and doesn’t want to listen to a religious and moral leader.”
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