NYTimes | In Pope Francis’ most significant move yet to reshape the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church
in the United States, Blase J. Cupich took his seat in Chicago on
Tuesday as archbishop of the nation’s third-largest Catholic archdiocese
and called on the church not to be afraid of change.
In
a multilingual installation Mass at Holy Name Cathedral, with American
bishops, his large extended family and Mayor Rahm Emanuel looking on,
Archbishop Cupich was handed the golden crosier, a shepherd’s staff,
that belonged to a powerful liberal predecessor, Cardinal George
Mundelein, who became archbishop of Chicago 99 years ago and served for
24 years.
“We
as a church should not fear leaving the security of familiar shores,
the peacefulness of the mountaintop of our self-assuredness, but rather
walk into the mess,” Archbishop Cupich said in an upbeat and
plain-spoken homily.
With Archbishop Cupich now seated, Pope Francis gets a media-savvy
American communicator in tune with his message of reinvigorating the
church by stressing mercy over judgmentalism, change over stasis, and
the imperative for all Catholics to go to the margins of society to
serve the poor, migrants and those without hope. It is a message that
not every bishop has enthusiastically embraced.
