Quotes from Blase J. Cupich

We are a people unafraid to welcome 'your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,' because we measure others by the quality of their hopes for the future, not by the circumstances of their birth.

The long arc of history that recounts the Catholic Church's embrace of people of all faiths and none in providing health, education, and welfare in society is as incontestable as it is impressive.

My folks were very practical. They were also kind of able to think outside of the box. They were not going to let circumstance paralyze them. They knew sometimes you just had to take some new initiative. I think they passed that on to all of us... If you don't find a way, you make one.

When the state imposes the death penalty, it proclaims that taking one human life counterbalances the taking of another life. This assumption is profoundly mistaken.

We must band together to call for gun-control legislation. We must act in ways that promote the dignity and value of human life.

The Catholic Church is an enormous footprint in Chicago, doing a lot of good. That aspiration is felt by a lot of people - that the church succeed - because it will be good for society.

I did my doctoral dissertation on the lectionary readings that we use at mass and how you have biblical texts that have been taken out of their original Bible context and put together for mass, and now they form a new text. Out of that new text, there is an interplay of new meaning.

We budget quite a bit of money every year in order to assist people who are migrating here, people who are trying to enter into our society and be a part of the American dream.

Some of the greatest Christians I know are people who don't actually have a kind of faith system that they believe in. But, in their activity, the way they conduct themselves, there's a goodness there.

Once a bishop is appointed, in terms of governance, we are semi-autonomous. It's not like we are branch managers of a bank or something.

Christ receives people; because of that mercy, conversion happens.

Our schools must be places where all are respected and the values of tolerance and peacemaking are taught and nurtured.