3 U.S. Cardinals Condemn Iran War and Mass Deportations on 60 Minutes

(UNITED STATES) – Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of Washington, and Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark used a joint “60 Minutes” interview aired April 12, 2026, to denounce the U.S. war in Iran and condemn mass deportations under President Trump, delivering one of the sharpest collective interventions yet from senior U.S. Catholic leaders on war and immigration.

The three cardinals appeared with Norah O’Donnell and tied their remarks to Pope Leo XIV’s appeals for peace and to what they described as mounting human costs from military action abroad and immigration enforcement at home. Their appearance came shortly after Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran, giving the broadcast a tense and immediate political backdrop.

The interview marked the first joint appearance by the three archdiocesan leaders. It brought together prelates from Chicago, Washington and Newark, three of the country’s most prominent Catholic sees, in a single national television forum at a moment when the church’s public disagreements with the administration had widened on two fronts at once.

Timing shaped much of the exchange. The segment aired a day after Pope Leo XIV held a Vigil for Peace in Rome on April 11, and after peace talks in Pakistan failed on April 11-12, leaving diplomacy stalled as the military conflict with Iran dominated international attention.

Leo had already rebuked Trump’s threat to Iranian civilization as “truly unacceptable” and warned that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” The cardinals’ comments on television echoed that message, but they put it into American political terms, arguing not only that war had crossed a moral line, but that public culture around the conflict had shifted in ways they found dangerous.

McElroy delivered the clearest theological judgment on the fighting. “No, in the Catholic teaching this is not a just war. The Catholic faith teaches us there are certain prerequisites for a just war. You can’t go for a variety of different aims. You have to have a focused aim, which is to restore justice and restore peace. That’s it.”

Pressed on Iran’s role in regional violence, McElroy did not soften his language about Tehran’s government. “It’s an abominable regime, and it should be removed. But this is a war of choice that we went to, and I think it’s embedded in a wider moment in the United States that’s worrying, which is this: We’re seeing before us the possibility of war after war after war.”

That answer set out a distinction that ran through the interview. McElroy separated condemnation of Iran’s leadership from support for military escalation, arguing that moral revulsion toward a regime did not settle whether a war met Catholic standards of justice, proportionality and peace.

Cupich took aim at how the conflict had been presented online by the White House, describing the tone not as strategic communication but as spectacle. “We’re dehumanizing the victims of war by turning the suffering of people and the killing of children and our own soldiers into entertainment. It is sickening to splice together movie cuts with actual bombing and targeting of people for the purposes of entertainment is sickening. This is not who we are. We’re better than this.”

His criticism widened the discussion beyond battlefield decisions to the language and imagery surrounding them. Cupich argued that public portrayal matters, because it shapes whether civilians, soldiers and children are seen as human beings caught in violence or as props in a political performance.

The ceasefire announcement shortly before the segment aired did not erase the force of the cardinals’ objections. Their remarks were framed around the decision to wage the war, the moral tests they said it failed, and the fears they voiced about a national pattern of repeated military conflicts rather than a single isolated campaign.

On immigration, Tobin used the interview to revisit a comment he made in January about Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Asked about his earlier statement calling ICE “a lawless organization,” he drew a line between the agency as an institution and conduct he said had violated basic constitutional norms.

“I didn’t say that they were people without law. But when people act in this way, when they have to hide their identities to terrify people, when they can actually violate other guarantees of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, well I think somebody’s got to call that out, and I’m not the only one.”

Tobin’s formulation turned the argument toward process and legality rather than broad denunciation alone. He focused on concealed identities, intimidation and constitutional protections, placing the church’s criticism inside a language of civil rights as well as Catholic social teaching.

McElroy described the deportation effort in sweeping terms, casting it as a campaign that had reached deep into settled communities. “a roundup of people throughout the country. People who have been living good, strong lives, been here a long time, raised their children here, many of their children born here, and are citizens. That’s what our objection is. What we’re seeing as pastors is an enormous, profound level of human suffering and that’s what motivates us.”

His account centered not on border crossings in the abstract, but on long-established families and parish life. McElroy said the policy was producing suffering that pastors were witnessing directly, giving the church’s criticism a pastoral rather than partisan frame, even as it landed squarely in a political fight.

Cupich addressed an awkward reality for the bishops: many Catholics backed Trump. He noted that Catholic support in the election stood at 55% to Kamala Harris’s 43%, but he questioned whether that support extended to the administration’s deportation drive.

“I would like to know what Catholics feel about this indiscriminate mass deportation. I think that it’s very clear the American people are saying, ‘We really didn’t vote for this.’” Cupich’s comment suggested a gap between broad support for border security and public consent for the scale and method of deportation now being carried out.

The cardinals said Pope Leo XIV had shaped their moral outlook on both issues. Born Robert Prevost in Chicago, the pope was described by them as a leader focused on “those who are downcast and marginalized,” a phrase that linked their opposition to war and deportation to a single vision of whose suffering should command the church’s attention.

That connection gave the interview an unusual coherence. War in Iran and immigration raids inside the United States were treated not as separate topics competing for airtime, but as related tests of whether political power recognized the dignity of people who were vulnerable, displaced or easily reduced to abstractions.

The setting also carried weight inside the American church. Cupich, McElroy and Tobin each lead archdioceses with national reach, and their decision to appear together turned what might otherwise have been seen as individual criticism into a coordinated public witness from three senior clerics whose names already carry influence in debates over Catholic life and public policy.

None of the three argued for passivity in the face of danger, and McElroy’s description of Iran as “an abominable regime” made that plain. Their intervention instead challenged the means chosen by the administration, the moral claims used to justify them, and the cultural habits that they said now normalize both war and the broad removal of immigrants rooted in American communities.

The program was produced by Keith Sharman, Julie Morse Goff, and Roxanne Feitel. By the time it aired on April 12, 2026, after the Rome vigil, the failed Pakistan talks and Trump’s ceasefire announcement, the three cardinals had placed themselves unmistakably at the center of two arguments likely to outlast the weekend: whether the war met any moral test at all, and whether the country accepts a deportation policy they described as indiscriminate and deeply injurious.