News
Featured Image
Cardinal Blase Cupich

LifeSiteNews has been permanently banned on YouTube. Click HERE to sign up to receive emails when we add to our video library.

CHICAGO, Illinois, April 26, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The Archdiocese of Chicago, led by Cardinal Blase Cupich, shut down Masses for University of Chicago students earlier this month and asked students not to attend Mass at a local parish either.

“University of Chicago students couldn’t attend Mass this weekend because church officials insisted it’s unsafe to worship when 0.6 percent of young people threatened more by flu contracts COVID-19,” wrote University of Chicago student Evita Duffy in a Chicago Thinker article republished at The Federalist on April 20. “This was not the result of a directive from the secular UChicago administration. The decision came directly from the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Joseph Cupich, who ordered the campus church to cancel Mass for students due to the campus COVID ‘outbreak.’”

The Chicago Department of Public Health had issued a directive to extend current precautions at the university because 0.6% of the student population were considered positive for the Wuhan coronavirus. With a total of around 15,000 students, this means that about 90 students were infected.  

Not only was Holy Mass canceled for the Catholic students at the Catholic Center Calvert House, but in an email distributed to the students from Associate Director of Campus Ministry Matthew Moran, the students were directed to not attend Holy Mass at the nearby St. Thomas the Apostle Church.

“Noncompliance would be risky for the health of the parish community and could be scandalous for those aware of the restrictions,”Moran wrote.

“Some students at Calvert House were definitely of the opinion that the way to show obedience to the Bishop was to stay at home and not go to Mass,” Duffy told LifeSiteNews in a phone interview. “Others, like myself, thought, ‘this is bizarre that the bishop is telling young people not to go to Mass’ … we did not obey that order and went to Mass elsewhere.”

Image
Copy of email accessed from University Student Evita Duffy’s article

While students were told to skip Mass, Chicago was in a Phase IV of “Reopening Gradually.” This means that all places of worship were open at 50 percent capacity with no more than 50 people. Furthermore , as far as Duffy understood it, Cupich wasn’t asked to shut down Holy Mass at the University – he did so of his own volition.  

“Cupich is collapsing church attendance by voluntarily imposing excessive COVID rules and regulations,” Duffy said.  

Duffy isn’t the only Catholic frustrated with the cardinal. Last May, a group called the St. Charles Borromeo Society blasted Cupich for his restrictive reopening plan

Pro-LGBT Cupich, one of the most heterodox bishops in the United States, has said there is a “moral obligation” to take the experimental, abortion-tainted coronavirus shots. He also supports giving Communion to pro-abortion politicians in defiance of Church law; is affiliated with the far-left, dissident Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP), which calls for the priestly “ordination” of women; defended the “Pachamama” idol worship during the October 2019 Amazon Synod in Rome; and has persecuted faithful priests, including Father Paul Kalchick, who was forced into hiding after burning the homosexual rainbow flag.

“Cupich seems more interested in woke virtue signaling, closing churches, and covering for child rapists than he is in spreading the gospel and administering the Eucharist in a crime-ridden, murderous city that desperately needs the church,” wrote Duffy, who also detailed Cupich’s “long history” of covering up sex abuse allegations.

“To the young Catholics at UChicago and to the rest of the Chicago Archdiocese, Cupich is sending a message: political posturing is more important than Holy Mass and the sacraments. According to his edicts, church is decidedly non-essential.”

“While students are far from home, missing their families, and experiencing unprecedented isolation and loneliness during a pandemic that is less deadly for them than the seasonal flu, Cupich turns his back and locks the church doors,” she concluded.

RELATED:
We’re being ‘persecuted’: Catholic dad calls out Cardinal Cupich for severely restricting sacraments
Sorry, Cdl Cupich, you can’t insist that private baptisms require episcopal approval
Pro-LGBT Catholic bishops, priests decry, defy Vatican’s ban on blessings for homosexual couples
The Leprechaun has no clothes: Notre Dame violates the Nuremberg Code of 1947