Day: October 22, 2025

Crosses stand in a row at the Wounded Knee Memorial in South Dakota. / Credit: Von Roenn/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 22, 2025 / 15:24 pm (CNA).

Rapid City, South Dakota, Bishop Scott E. Bullock and South Dakota Jesuit leaders criticized U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for honoring U.S. soldiers who carried out an 1890 assault on a Lakota reservation near the Wounded Knee Creek.

“Those who died at Wounded Knee are sacred,” the joint statement read.

“Jesus stands with all who suffer and die at the hands of others,” the statement added. “Those who committed the violence are also sacred; for this reason, Jesus offers them mercy and healing. Yet the acts themselves were grave evils and cannot be honored.”

On Dec. 29, 1890, U.S. soldiers killed nearly 300 Lakota people in an assault now known as the “Wounded Knee Massacre” or the “Battle of Wounded Knee” in South Dakota. Most of the Lakota killed were civilians, including unarmed women and children, and 31 American soldiers were killed.

After a review, Hegseth announced last month that 20 U.S. soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor for actions at Wounded Creek will retain those honors. The Medal of Honor is the nation’s highest military honor, awarded by Congress for risk of life in combat beyond the call of duty. A review panel commissioned by former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recommended they retain their honors in October 2024.

“That panel concluded that these brave soldiers should, in fact, rightfully keep their medals for actions in 1890,” Hegseth said in a Sept. 25 post on X.

Hegseth criticized Lloyd for not issuing a final decision on the inquiry last year, saying “he was more interested in being politically correct than historically correct.”

“We’re making it clear — without hesitation — that the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 will keep their medals, and we’re making it clear that they deserve those medals,” Hegseth said. “This decision is now final and their place in our nation’s history is no longer up for debate. We salute their memory, we honor their service, and we will never forget what they did.”

Bishop, Jesuits call for ‘prayerful correctness’

Bullock, whose diocese serves western South Dakota where the assault took place, was joined in his statement by the De Smet Jesuit Community of West River, South Dakota.

They said their opposition to the Medals of Honor is not rooted in “political correctness,” as Hegseth called it, but rather in “prayerful correctness, grounded in truth, conscience, and compassion.”

Bullock and the Jesuits said soldiers massacred civilians: “This was not a battle. To recognize these acts as honorable is to distort history itself.”

“We acknowledge the government’s intent to honor its troops, yet we reject any narrative that erases the humanity of the victims or glorifies acts of violence,” they said.

The statement said as Catholics and followers of Christ, “we proclaim the infinite dignity of every human life. We confess that humanity — capable of love and goodness — is also capable of terrible evil.” It added that the Crucifixion and Resurrection “reveal that true victory comes not through killing but through suffering love, mercy, and truth.”

“If we deny our part in history, we deepen the harm,” they said. “We cannot lie about the past without perpetuating injustice and moral blindness. Even if we are not personally responsible for Wounded Knee, we bear a moral responsibility to remember and speak the truth.”

Susan Hanssen, a history professor at the University of Dallas (a Catholic institution), told CNA Wounded Knee “was a complex historical event” that had “many conflicting narratives.” She said military records show conflicting accusations, investigations, and personal rivalries among military officers.

She said, with historical events, there is not always “easy moral clarity.” 

She said the events “cannot simply be viewed as an unprovoked massacre, racially motivated against all Native Americans indiscriminately.”

Hanssen expressed concern that the effort to revoke the honors for soldiers at Wounded Knee is part of an ongoing effort to target “American and Western culture,” which includes destroying statues of Christopher Columbus and attacks on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, among others.

“It is perfectly reasonable for the United States government to refuse to revoke Medals of Honor from over a hundred years ago,” she added.

No Medals of Honor have been revoked for any reason in more than a century. The only time medals were revoked was in 1917, when Congress commissioned a comprehensive review of Medal of Honor recipients and revoked more than 900.

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich (meeting with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Oct. 9, 2025) issued a video with a message of support for immigrants on Oct. 21, 2025. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/EWTN News

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 22, 2025 / 13:14 pm (CNA).

In a new video, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago has once again pledged his support for undocumented migrants.

“Let me be clear: The Church stands with migrants,” Cupich said in a video message on Oct. 21. Citing family separation and “communities shaken by immigration raids and detentions,” he said ongoing deportation efforts in Chicago “wound the soul of our city.”

Cupich emphasized that “in the enforcement of the law, it is essential that we respect the dignity of every human being,” and noted parishes and schools in the archdiocese will neither turn away migrants seeking aid nor “be silent when dignity is denied.”

He continued: “I want to say something directly to those immigrants without documents: Most of you have been here for years, you have worked hard, you have raised families, you have contributed to this nation, you have earned our respect.”

“As the archbishop of Chicago, I will insist that you be treated with dignity,” he stated, concluding: “Americans should not forget that we all come from immigrant families. You are our brothers and sisters. We stand with you. God bless you all.” 

The video message comes amid the “One Church One Family” initiative spearheaded by the western Jesuits to hold national days of prayer and public witness for migrants on Oct. 22 and Nov. 13, the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, patron of migrants. 

The initiative calls on dioceses, parishes, schools, religious communities, and other Catholic institutions to host and promote “public actions that lift up the dignity of migrants,” such as “a vigil in front of a detention center, a prayer service at a place where migrants were publicly detained, or a rosary accompanying people who are going to immigration court hearings.” 

The initiative’s website includes, along with other resources, instructions on how to organize and implement a vigil, prayer service, or march in support of migrants, which includes a welcome letter from Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas.

“As Catholics and people of deep faith, we reject the culture of fear and silence that dehumanizes, and we choose instead to stand with migrants,” the initiative’s website reads. “Together, our voices will send a powerful message in defense of the dignity of our neighbors, family members, fellow parishioners, classmates, co-workers, and friends.”

Cupich was appointed by Pope Leo XIV to the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State on Oct. 15. It is unclear whether the post will entail a relocation to the Holy City.

During a visit on Oct. 9, Leo expressed his “appreciation” to Chicago leaders, including Cupich, for their “welcome of immigrants and refugees.” This came shortly after the controversy surrounding Cupich’s attempt to honor Illinois pro-abortion Sen. Dick Durbin with a lifetime achievement award for his work with immigrants.

The Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. / Credit: Wikideas1, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Staff, Oct 22, 2025 / 12:44 pm (CNA).

The state of Wisconsin is attempting to eliminate a tax exemption for religious organizations after it failed at the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year when trying to block a Catholic charity from claiming that tax break.

The Supreme Court in June unanimously ruled that the state violated the First Amendment when it denied a tax exemption to the Diocese of Superior’s Catholic Charities Bureau. The state had argued that the group’s charitable undertakings were not “primarily” religious and thus failed to qualify for the tax break.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court had earlier ruled against the Catholic charity before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision. But in an Oct. 21 press release, the religious liberty legal group Becket said that the state government is now asking the state Supreme Court to “eliminate the exemption entirely.”

“Rather than following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Wisconsin officials are now trying to avoid it by attacking the religious exemption itself,” the group said. 

The tax exemption directs that organizations “operated primarily for religious purposes” can be exempt from paying into the state’s unemployment system. In a brief to the state Supreme Court, state officials said the tax exemption itself is “discriminatory” and that ending the policy would “avoid collateral damage to Wisconsin workers” while satisfying the U.S. Supreme Court’s order. 

State officials did not respond to requests for comment from CNA on Oct. 22. Nick Reaves, a senior attorney with Becket, told CNA that eliminating the tax exemption would “just replace one unconstitutional rule after another.” 

Reaves said the U.S. Supreme Court justices in their ruling “clearly contemplated extending the benefit to Catholic Charities” rather than eliminating the benefit altogether. 

“If you eliminate the exemption, it doesn’t solve the constitutional problem, because the state has something like 40 other exemptions for secular groups,” he said. Union groups and organizations that do work in prisons are among the entities that have access to the exemption, he said.

“The First Amendment prohibits favoring secular activity over religious activity” in such cases, he said. “Our view is Wisconsin just can’t eliminate the exemption.”

Reaves said the Catholic charity has a high likelihood of getting its case before the Supreme Court again. “The chance of getting a hearing at the Supreme Court is low, initially,” he said. “But they’re much more likely to take a case again if the lower court gets it wrong again.”

“Obviously the Wisconsin Supreme Court will weigh in on this first,” he said. “We’re hoping our arguments are persuasive there.”

In its filing, meanwhile, Becket said Wisconsin’s “animus” toward the Catholic charity group is “anything but subtle.” 

“The only constitutional approach is to grant Catholic Charities an exemption, as the U.S. Supreme Court’s order requires,” the filing said.