Pope Leo XIV channels Cardinal Bernardin's teachings to stand against Iran war

I came to the Catholic Theological Union in September 2024 on a scholarship, not as a theologian but as a civil engineer pulled toward questions of justice. One course I did not expect to stay with me was taught by Steven Millies — a semester-long examination of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Chicago's most beloved archbishop. Now, watching Pope Leo XIV rebuke President Donald Trump over the war in Iran, I keep returning to what I learned in that room.

This confrontation is not random. The pope, born Robert Prevost, graduated from CTU in 1982. He sat in classrooms shaped by the same tradition I have been studying. That tradition has a name — the consistent ethic of life.

Bernardin developed this idea in the 1980s to address fragmented moral discourse in American public life. His argument was simple and demanding: Human life forms one seamless thread. You cannot protect it in one place and ignore it in another.

Poverty, war, capital punishment, the treatment of migrants are not separate issues filed under different political parties. They are expressions of a single question: Do we take human life seriously, everywhere, without exception? In Chicago, he built interfaith coalitions across racial and neighborhood lines, insisting that a city holds together only when no thread is left behind.

When Pope Leo XIV declared on Palm Sunday that God "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war," he was not freelancing. When he described threats against Iranian infrastructure as “truly unacceptable,” he was applying Bernardin's logic: A civilization is a seamless garment too. You cannot claim to honor life while threatening to destroy a people's capacity to live it.

The Chicago that shaped Bernardin also shaped CTU. The school sits at the intersection of Catholic social teaching and the lived realities of a working city. That is not an abstraction. It is a curriculum.

What we are watching is not a personal feud between a pope from Chicago and a president from Queens. It is a collision between two answers to the same question: What does power owe to human life?

I came to Chicago as an engineer, trained to build systems that hold. What I found here was a tradition that insists those systems must hold for everyone, or they do not hold at all. Right now, from the Vatican, that tradition is speaking in the accent of this city.

Yunus Emre Tozal, graduate student, Catholic Theological Union

I’m a believer

I attended Catholic grammar and high school and was an altar boy. As I grew older, I became a lapsed Catholic. With Pope Leo XIV standing up to Donald Trump, maybe it’s time to stand with Leo and return to the church.

Bob Rosinia, Lincoln Square

Troublesome twosome

"I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on with the Catholic Church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy," Vice President JD Vance said.

There is so much wrong with Vance's statement, starting with his implied belief that there was no moral aspect to attacking Iran, but not necessarily ending with his claim that the president "dictates" public policy.

Presidents do not dictate policy. Dictators do. However, I do appreciate the vice president's candor about what Donald Trump is trying to be, although I doubt that he intended to be that candid.

As for his claim that Trump took down a Christlike image of himself "because he realized a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor," Trump makes a lot of crude and insensitive attempts at being funny, but years of observation have led to my doubt that he has a genuinely humor-capable bone in his body.

Curt Fredrikson, Mokena

Expand mail-in ballot drop-off sites

Illinois has long been a national leader in protecting both voter access and election security. Our state has demonstrated that expanding election participation and maintaining election integrity are not competing goals — they are complementary pillars of a healthy democracy.

Today, however, Illinois voters face new uncertainty that requires proactive action from state lawmakers.

The League of Women Voters of Illinois is urging the General Assembly to update Illinois election law to allow voters to return completed vote-by-mail ballots — sealed in their official return envelopes — at any polling place within their election authority’s jurisdiction on Election Day.

This change is simple, practical and urgently needed.

Recent developments at the federal level, including the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could prohibit states from counting vote-by-mail ballots received after Election Day — even when postmarked on time — threaten to invalidate thousands of lawful votes nationwide. Illinois allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive within a statutory grace period. If federal action removes that protection, voters who followed every rule could still see their ballots rejected due solely to postal delays beyond their control.

No eligible voter should lose their voice because of the speed of the mail.

Many Illinois residents rely on vote by mail — including seniors, voters with disabilities, caregivers and workers whose schedules make in-person voting difficult. While election authorities across Illinois provide a few secure drop boxes, those locations are limited in number and not easily accessible for many voters. By contrast, polling places are widely distributed, familiar to voters and staffed by trained election judges on Election Day.

The League of Women Voters of Illinois is advocating for legislation this session to allow vote-by-mail ballot drop-off at polling places within a voter’s election authority jurisdiction statewide, up to and including on Election Day, so the option is available in time for the November election.

Becky Simon, president, League of Women Voters of Illinois

Standing with Latina survivors

As I read the recent news stories about César Chávez, my heart breaks for the survivors who endured years of abuse and for Dolores Huerta, one of my role models.

As I reflect on these painful stories, I reflect on my own story of sexual abuse as a little girl, my own silence, and the stories of other Latinas who have also experienced abuse at the hands of a father, brother, tío, cousin, family friend, etc.

Recent headlines have focused on shock and disappointment, specifically referencing Chávez’s tarnished legacy. The truth is, I am not shocked, and I would bet many other Latinas aren’t either.

Latinas who experience abuse are often silenced. The “Me Too” movement calls for women to stand in solidarity and refuse silence. For some reason, one that I could not pinpoint until now, this movement has always felt distant to me.

Amid the breaking news about Chávez, I have found myself reflecting on my own silence and that of so many Latinas. For Latinas, barriers to speaking out are cultural and systemic, which are rooted in machismo, a system of dominance reinforcing that women should endure harm to preserve family and a man’s reputation.

The sexual abuse perpetrated by Chávez is not an exception.

This moment is an opportunity to confront a larger truth: Latinas often experience abuse that is hidden, excused or ignored. Latinas are silenced not only by those who harm them, but by the communities around them, by the people they confide in, by those who witness the signs and say nothing.

Research shows that approximately 1 in 6 Latinas in the U.S. will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. Those numbers do not show the full picture. They do not account for women who do not feel empowered to speak.

This moment calls for something deeper than disappointment. It calls for the Latino community to look inward. Real change requires our community to stand with survivors loudly, to amplify their voices even when it feels uncomfortable and to insist on accountability. Change begins when we are willing to risk discomfort, disrupt tradition, break generational cycles and say enough is enough.

Alexis Hernandez, Pilsen

Flooding in Chicago is natural

Flooding in Chicago has been a concern for years. Chicago sits on a marsh — quite a large one, with the South and West sides almost entirely composed of swampland. To suggest that those areas are somehow more affected by flooding because they are poorer ignores the base geography.

Man, in his never-ending quest for riches, determined that swampland could be converted into a money-making enterprise if drained, and entered into a decades-long project to make it so. What seemed like a good idea at the time, draining swamps to create marketable, e.g. moneymaking, land, did not appear to take the purpose of the land into account.

Wetlands exist for a reason. To prevent flooding, stabilize aquifers and provide a habitat for wildlife. They had been thus for hundreds or even thousands of years.

We made our choice, and it was enterprise over nature. Now, we pay the price. Spending funds on projects to divert the water when it comes and constantly repairing the damage from floods does nothing to address the cause. Until and unless considerably more emphasis is placed on creating green spaces and working with the land instead of against it, Chicago, like other parts of the Midwest that foolishly drained swamps to create usable land, will be spinning their wheels in the fight against flooding.

It appears that Mother Nature is having the last laugh.

Barbara Orze, Cedar Lake, Indiana

Make public health a priority

As the Sun-Times' Elvia Malagón recently reported, cuts to federal public health dollars for HIV response worsen health risks.

In this wealthy country, we can — and indeed, we should — fully fund public health.

Different from medicine, public health is our collective response to collective health problems. Any health problem requires both health care for individuals and a public health approach focused on preventing disease, reducing risks and responding with consideration for populations. Public health and medicine must work together, which requires sufficient funding.

Congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump are cutting much more than public funding for HIV response — a proposal to cut Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding by 53% demonstrates their disdain for Americans' well-being.

The long-standing neglect-boom-bust-neglect public health funding cycle is exemplified by the too-little, too-late COVID-19 temporary funding influx and later reduction. Elected officials unreasonably expect health departments to build a plane while flying it after denying necessary resources before crises hit.

Dedicated public health workers do their best to address problems despite these untenable conditions. Yet, many talented public health workers leave their jobs because the funding for their positions gets cut or the expectations are too high with the limited resources. That is a recipe for burnout and talent loss, and yes, unmet public health needs.

Preventable sicknesses, injuries and early deaths occur when public health staffing and infrastructure are underfunded. We need robust, flexible and sustained public health funding to maintain capacity.

We must not hold our breath for the Trump regime and his Republican underlings. But we are not helpless here in the Chicago area and Illinois. Our elected leaders must respond, and we who value community health should demand that they find the money to fund public health.

Wesley Epplin, policy director, Health & Medicine Policy Research Group

Tax thoughts

After all these years of denigrating former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, I find myself in agreement on one thing: taxing sports betting to fund science and technology. But let’s not stop there — use those taxes to also fund the rest of STEAM education: engineering, arts and mathematics. And those billionaires or millionaires who don’t already follow MacKenzie Scott’s fabulous lead (notably donating to the Girl Scouts and universities), tax them too!

Maja Ramirez, Avondale