Vatican City, Jan 30, 2021 / 08:00 am
Pope Francis met with Cardinal Blase Cupich on Saturday, 10 days after the cardinal publicly criticized the U.S. bishops' official statement on the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
The private audience occurred in the Apostolic Palace on the morning of Jan. 30. Cardinal Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, has been in Rome for a meeting of the Vatican Congregation for Bishops. The Holy See Press Office did not release any further information on the meeting other than that it took place.
On Jan. 20, the day of the U.S. presidential inauguration, Cupich took to Twitter to criticize a statement from Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. bishops' conference.
In his four-part Twitter thread Cupich said that "the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an ill-considered statement on the day of President Biden's inauguration. Aside from the fact that there is seemingly no precedent for doing so, the statement, critical of President Biden, came as a surprise to many bishops, who received it just hours before it was released."