Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Wednesday he was “overwhelmed” by the support of Pope Leo XIV, the new pontiff from Chicago, after facing criticism for backing abortion rights.
“It is amazing to me,” Durbin told NBC News on Wednesday. “It’s quite a moment. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t know it was going to happen.”
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich planned to honor Durbin with a lifetime achievement award for his pro-immigration work, but the move drew backlash from U.S. bishops over his abortion stance.
“The senator’s public record has been consistently pro-abortion and he has opposed any protections or safeguards for unborn children in the womb, even to the point of rejecting legislation to protect children who survive failed abortions,” Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Neb., said in a social platform X post on Sept. 23. “That goes against the fundamental moral principles of the Catholic Church.”
Durbin told NBC News he was surprised by the backlash and declined the award, but Pope Leo later came to his defense.
Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion but says I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” Leo said, according to the Catholic News Agency (CNA). “Someone who says that ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Leo told CNA that while he was not “terribly familiar with [Durbin’s] particular case,” he said it was “important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I’m not mistaken, in 40 years of service in the United States Senate.”
Following Leo’s remarks, Durbin told NBC News that he did not reconsider declining the award: “I knew there would be pushback from several — but the level of the controversy led me to believe that it’s best that I decline to accept the award.”
Cupich was a close adviser to Pope Francis, Leo’s predecessor, who opposed abortion but criticized U.S. bishops for politicizing the issue.
