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On Tuesday night, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago did something American prelates rarely do: he publicly challenged the White House’s honesty.
Stephanie Ruhle had recounted how Renee Good and Alex Pretti — both U.S. citizens — were shot dead by federal agents in Minneapolis this month.
“We need your guidance here,” she said, noting the nation’s grief and anger. Cupich did not hesitate. Marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, he reminded viewers that atrocity “didn’t begin when they opened concentration camps. It began with words,” he warned, with leaders calling human beings “vermin” and “garbage.”
The cardinal drew a straight line from hateful language to violent deeds, stressing that “words do matter.” And in this case, he argued, words are being twisted to cover up the violence.
Cupich accused the administration of lying about the circumstances of Alex Pretti’s killing. “We saw what happened,” he said of the video showing Pretti’s death, “yet there is a narrative out there that flies in the face of what our eyes told us.”
The host pressed further: shouldn’t we just call these “alternative facts” what they are — “lies?” Cupich, face grave, did not disagree. It was a remarkable moment: a Catholic cardinal effectively calling the Trump-Vance White House liars.
His claim was warranted.
In fact, multiple bystander recordings showed Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, being pepper-sprayed and beaten by a squad of federal agents as he tried to help a woman to her feet — moments before an agent shot him in the back.
Yet Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others insisted Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” intent on a massacre. To Cupich, this was the last straw. A line had been crossed not only on the streets of Minneapolis, but in the moral universe.
If a government is willing to distort the truth of an unjust killing — “to fly in the face of what our eyes see” — then people of faith have a duty to speak out. As Cupich put it, “it is important to call people out” when they attempt to replace truth with propaganda.
Cupich’s rebuke highlights a theme Pope Leo XIV has been hammering since his election: the urgent need to reclaim truth in public life. In his televised remarks, Cupich explicitly cited Pope Leo’s warning that our real crisis today is “relativism” — the notion that truth can be reduced to “opinion” or “alternative facts.”
That phrase comes straight from a papal message earlier this month. In a letter to a European conference, Pope Leo cautioned that the “spread of relativism” — treating truth as mere opinion — undermines the moral foundations of society.
Now Cupich was echoing his pope on American TV, essentially saying we are living that crisis. When federal officials spin a false narrative about a man’s death, the cardinal suggested, they invite us into dangerous territory: a world where there is no shared reality, only competing fictions imposed by the powerful. “
“We saw actually what happened,” Cupich insisted, urging Americans to trust the evidence of their eyes over any politically convenient tale. The implication was clear. If leaders will lie about matters of life and death, people of conscience must lean into the truth even more boldly.
For Cupich, this is not about partisanship — it’s about basic human dignity. “Each and every human being has dignity. We’re going down a path far from who we claim to be as a nation,” he said, lamenting how refugees and migrants are dehumanized with slurs.
The Holocaust analogy was no throwaway line. Cupich wanted Americans to recall how easily a society can slide into cruelty when it accepts“bigoted language and false narratives about the other.
If that sounds like a moral alarm bell, it is. And Cupich is not ringing it alone.
In fact, the Chicago cardinal is one of Pope Leo’s top allies in the United States, part of a growing chorus of Catholic voices speaking out with unprecedented candor.
In recent days, U.S. bishops have begun using increasingly urgent language to oppose the Trump–Vance administration’s hardline policies. Just hours before Cupich’s cable television appearance, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark delivered his own blistering message.
Tobin called on Congress to “vote against renewing funding for such a lawless organization” — referring to ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a prayerful webinar, Tobin described how America is now a country that “allows 5-year-olds to be legally kidnapped and protesters to be slaughtered,” a reality he deemed intolerable.
He even invoked an Italian anti-fascist tale of a lone person writing “NO” on a wall at midnight — an act of conscience that “topples empires” and “keeps dictators awake at night”.
The message across these interventions is remarkably unified: Enough is enough. From Chicago to Newark to the borderlands, Catholic leaders are urging the faithful to just say “no” — no to violence, no to dehumanization, no to the post-truth nihilism spreading in our country.
Cardinal Cupich’s voice, in particular, carries weight. He has stood firmly with Pope Leo XIV’s agenda of social justice and compassion from day one, earning him both admiration and attacks.
Just a few months ago, Pope Leo XIV credited Cardinal Cupich for broadening the Church’s pro-life witness beyond a single issue.
Now, with the nation in turmoil, Cupich is again answering Leo’s call. And the language he used on national television — “garbage,” “animals,” and “Holocaust” — shows a new willingness to confront political leaders about their hatred in moral terms.
Cupich is effectively saying what Pope Leo himself has signaled: the Church will not be silent in the face of cruelty, and it will name and challenge evil, no matter how powerful its source.
It’s no coincidence that Cupich’s media blitz came just a week after he and two other American cardinals issued a rare joint letter lambasting the administration’s foreign policy.
In that statement, co-signed by Cardinals Robert McElroy of Washington and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, the trio warned that “America’s moral role in confronting evil around the world” is now in serious question.
They pointed to President Trump’s provocations — from Ukraine to Venezuela to even musings about Greenland — as evidence that the post-WWII global order is being dangerously eroded.
Appearing on PBS Chicago to discuss the letter, Cupich explained that the long-held consensus on respecting national borders and resolving conflicts through dialogue “is evaporating.”
In its place, he said, has emerged a mindset that “might makes right” — a recipe for disaster if left unchecked. Pope Leo XIV himself had just delivered a major address along these lines to diplomats in Rome, decrying that “war is back in vogue” and urging nations to return to treating peace as a supreme good.
The cardinals were throwing down a gauntlet: the United States must rediscover its moral compass, or risk losing its soul at home and leadership abroad. Cupich, Tobin, and others are raising prophetic voices, grounded not in partisan ideology but in the Gospel and centuries of Catholic teaching on human dignity.
And they are doing so with Pope Leo’s evident encouragement. In Cupich’s words, “the Holy Father is surely is stepping up to the plate” on the world stage — but “he can’t do it alone.” The pope, Cupich said, “wants to energize and engage people to take responsibility.”
In other words, Leo is calling all of us onto the field.
Cardinal Cupich ended his interview with a challenge and a hope. What can we do, he was asked, to bridge the angry divides tearing us apart? His answer: get involved.
This is a democracy, he reminded viewers, so citizens must demand justice from their leaders and not “sit on our hands.” Every person of goodwill has a part to play — whether it’s speaking up for those being demonized, providing concrete help to immigrant families, or simply refusing to buy into convenient lies.
Cupich has praised how ordinary Chicagoans have opened food pantries and legal clinics for undocumented neighbors. Faith in action, he’s noted, looks like that: feeding the hungry, tending the sick, welcoming the stranger. It also looks like moral clarity.
In Chicago, Cupich made sure that the Catholic Church stands beside migrant families, even as raids and deportations escalate. Now he’s making sure the whole country hears that message.
We must support those whose voices are being muted, he urged, and call our leaders back to decency. This is the “responsibility of every citizen,” not just priests or politicians.
The road ahead will not be easy. The forces of division and fear remain strong. Some bishops, like America’s most famous evangelist, Robert Barron will continually fall short of the demands of our faith.
But Cupich and his fellow Leo-aligned bishops seem convinced that if enough people simply stand up and say “NO” — no to hatred, no to lies, no to the throwaway culture that tramples the vulnerable — then even the mightiest tyrants can be humbled.
They are, in essence, rallying the faithful to reclaim America’s conscience.
As Pope Leo XIV has taught, peace and justice are built on truth — and truth must never be surrendered to expediency. Cardinal Cupich is taking that teaching to heart.
By boldly calling out deception at the highest levels and calling forth the better angels of our nature, he’s beckoning all of us to join Pope Leo in standing for truth against lies, and for human dignity against the forces of tyranny.
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