Pro-Lifers Protest Cupich Award to Abortion Donor
Nearly 4,000 sign a petition seeking withdrawal of the Nostra Aetate honor as the Chicago banquet raises funds for seminarians.
On October 29, 2026, Illinois Right to Life protested outside IBEW Local 134 in Chicago as the Archdiocese of Chicago held its Rerum Novarum Banquet. The Chicago-based pro-life group objected to Cardinal Blase Cupich’s decision to confer the Nostra Aetate Award on billionaire investor and philanthropist Michael Sacks.
Sacks is CEO of GCM Grosvenor, president of the Sacks Family Foundation, and a board member of the Obama Foundation. Records cited by the protesters show he gave $500,000 to Planned Parenthood of Illinois from 2020 to 2022 and $600,000 in 2026 to the Prairie State Access Fund. That fund was created by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to support the state’s "reproductive health ecosystem" and to counter federal restrictions on abortion and gender-affirming care.
Petition and Protest
By banquet day, Illinois Right to Life’s petition calling on Cardinal Cupich to withdraw the award had gathered nearly 4,000 signatures. The archdiocese had not responded, Mary Kate Zander, the group’s president, said. Protesters also pointed to Sacks’s 2013 signature on a letter endorsing same-sex marriage and to Equality Illinois’s 2015 Business Leadership Award to him.
Zander said the group is "concerned about the scandal that it creates," that the cardinal "is leading people astray and is scandalizing the faithful," and that "we’re also concerned with this man’s soul." The banquet’s primary purpose is raising money for seminarians. Illinois Right to Life previously mounted a similar campaign when Cardinal Cupich planned to honor Sen. Dick Durbin, who later declined amid backlash that included criticism from other bishops.
Cardinal’s Defense and Church Teaching
In an October 26 statement, Cardinal Cupich called Sacks "a well-respected leader in Chicago and in the Jewish community." He said the award "acknowledges this shared divine heritage, distinct from specific contemporary political or doctrinal disputes" and is given "without implying an endorsement of every statement or stance." He said critics objected because Sacks does not hold core Catholic beliefs, "primary among them being the divinity of Jesus Christ," and warned that refusing to honor Jews over their positions "can risk mimicking historic patterns of antisemitism." The statement did not address abortion or same-sex marriage.
The U.S. bishops’ document Catholics in Political Life states that "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." Neither Sacks nor GCM Grosvenor issued a public reply to questions about the donations. For Catholics committed to the defense of unborn life, the episode raises a concrete question of witness: public honors conferred by Church institutions must not blur the Church’s non-negotiable teaching on the sanctity of life.