The recent meeting at the Vatican between Governor JB Pritzker and Pope Leo raises troubling questions about the Church’s moral witness. It is difficult for faithful Catholics to understand why the pope would choose to sit down with a politician who has so strongly embraced the culture of death surrounding abortion and euthanasia. Earlier this year, Pritzker expanded state taxpayer complicity in abortion by allocating 23 million dollars to expand abortion services and support funds for those traveling to Illinois for abortion, making his state of Illinois a regional hub for patients traveling from restrictive states. This means taxpayer funds are directly used to subsidize abortion for the state’s residents — and those traveling from other states.
Illinois is one of the few states where Medicaid covers all abortions, including elective procedures, not just cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment. Planned Parenthood of Illinois reports that 30 percent of its revenue (about $16 million) comes from Medicaid reimbursements. To help meet that need, Pritzker announced more than $23 million in new funding for abortion access, including a hotline and expanded services to handle the influx of patients traveling from restrictive states. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Illinois has become a regional hub for abortion, with clinics reporting a 40–45 percent increase in patients, about 25 percent of whom come from out of state.
Apparently committed to becoming the most “pro-abortion” governor in the country, American Spectator reported that earlier this year, Pritzker signed into law a mandate that requires public colleges and universities to provide medication abortions on campus to any student who requests them. Illinois House Bill 3709, which passed with a House vote of 7 to 4 on March 19, 2025, and was signed into law on Aug. 22, 2025, by the governor, mandates that if a public college or university’s student health services include a pharmacy, the school must make medication abortion available at a physical location on campus. (RELATED: Illinois Law Mandates On-Campus Abortion Services)
And now Governor Pritzker claims to be considering whether to sign Illinois’s pro-euthanasia bill, which was passed on Halloween. This bill was passed surreptitiously by attaching the deadly suicide measure to Senate Bill 1950, a once uncontroversial bill that originally focused on food preparation safety. Lawmakers made a calculated decision to block open debate and advance the legislation while shielding the bill’s true nature from public view. The governor has not said whether he will sign it or not, but in an interview earlier this month, Pritzker told a reporter that “Every time I talk to somebody, it has a little bit of an effect. You’re sort of cumulatively gathering information … I know there are people who feel passionately on both sides. I have said before that I have friends who’ve gone through this with their relatives. It’s painful for the person who’s experiencing the pain in the last six months of their lives, as well as for the entire family.” (RELATED: ‘Death’ by Deception on Halloween in Illinois)
Claiming that whatever he decides on the bill, “it will come down to compassion … It’s a hard issue. And I don’t want anybody to think that making up your mind about this is very easy. It’s no … I think there’s a lot to consider, but most of all, it’s about compassion. There’s evidence and information on both sides that leads me to think seriously about what direction to go.”
According to the published interview, Pritzker said that he brought the issue up in his meeting last month with Pope Leo XIV, when he met privately with him at the Vatican, but Pritzker didn’t say what the Pope’s response to the issue was: “Obviously, we are members of different religions [and] don’t really disagree so much as just have differences in that way,” Pritzker, who is Jewish, said. “So it was kind of a brief part of a conversation in which we were dismissing all those things and then getting to the things that we really have so much in common. And I so much respect who he is and what he represents.”
Most believe that Pritzker will reject anything that Pope Leo might have cautioned on the immorality of assisted suicide. The fact that the governor has already said he will “come down to compassion” is a signal that he believes that assisted suicide is the “compassionate choice.”
Such a meeting risks signaling tacit approval of Pritzker’s policies that directly contradict Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life, undermining the credibility of the Church’s stance in the public square.
And this is really why it was such a problem for Pope Leo to meet with someone like Governor Pritzker. Such a meeting risks signaling tacit approval of Pritzker’s policies that directly contradict Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life, undermining the credibility of the Church’s stance in the public square. But it is likely that the reason Pope Leo met with Pritzker in the first place is that they have become allies in what they both view as the problematic deportation policies of the Trump administration. According to the governor’s office, the private audience with the pontiff was arranged by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich. (RELATED: Catholic Cognitive Dissonance)
As a progressive democrat, Governor Pritzker has consistently voiced opposition to what he views as inhumane deportation policies, emphasizing their destructive impact on families and communities. Pope Leo likewise condemns such measures, framing them as violations of human dignity and moral responsibility. Their shared stance highlights a powerful alignment between political leadership and moral authority, reinforcing the call for more compassionate approaches to immigration. (RELATED: Is the Pope Woke?)
Yet this alliance also raises a troubling paradox: when the pope aligns himself with a leader who resists Catholic teachings on nearly every other issue — especially the life issues, it risks diluting the Church’s moral coherence. Such selective partnership can confuse the faithful, suggesting that agreement on a single humanitarian cause outweighs deep divisions on fundamental doctrine and may weaken the credibility of Catholic witness in the public sphere.
In the end, the Vatican meeting between Pope Leo and Governor Pritzker illustrates the peril of selective alliances. While agreement on immigration may appear noble, it risks obscuring the governor’s radical opposition to Catholic teaching on life itself. By lending moral credibility to a politician so deeply invested in the culture of death, the Church jeopardizes its witness, leaving the faithful to question whether its defense of human dignity is consistent or compromised.
READ MORE from Anne Hendershott:
Bowdoin College: Finishing School for a Socialist
‘Death’ by Deception on Halloween in Illinois
Electing the Image: Mamdani and the Mimetic Turn in Democracy
