Pope meets with Chicago union leaders, urges migrant welcome as crackdown underway in hometown

The audience was scheduled before the deployment of National Guard troops to protect federal property in the Chicago area, including a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building that has been the site of occasional clashes between protesters and federal agents.

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, who accompanied the labor leaders, said that Leo was well aware of the situation on the ground. In an interview with The Associated Press, Cupich said that Leo has made clear, including in recent comments, that migrants and the poor must be treated in ways that respect their human dignity.

"I really didn't have to tell him much at all, because he seemed to have a handle on what was going on," Cupich told the AP afterward.

He said that Leo had urged U.S. bishops in particular to "speak with one voice" on the issue. Cupich said he expected the November meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would make immigration a top agenda item.

"This has to be front and center right now. This is the issue of the day. And we can't dance around it," Cupich said.

Catholic leaders in the U.S. have denounced the Trump administration's crackdown, which has split up families and incited fears that people could be rounded up and deported any time. The administration has defended the crackdown as safeguarding public safety and national security.

"He (Leo) wants us to make sure, as bishops, that we speak out on behalf of the undocumented or anybody who's vulnerable to preserve their dignity," Cupich said. "We all have to remember that we all share a common dignity as human beings."

Cupich said he was heartened by Leo's remarks last week, in which the pope defended the cardinal's decision to honor Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin for his work helping immigrants. The plans drew objection from some conservative U.S. bishops given the powerful Democratic senator's support for abortion rights, and he ultimately declined the award.

It was the second meeting in as many days that history's first American pope has heard firsthand from a U.S. bishop on the front lines of the migration crackdown. On Wednesday, El Paso bishop Mark Seitz brought Leo letters from desperate immigrant families.

Cupich was in Rome for Vatican meetings and to also accompany a group of Chicago schoolchildren who got a special greeting from Leo during his Wednesday general audience. The kids had staged their own "mock conclave" in school this past spring and footage of their deliberations went viral online as the real conclave unfolded in Rome. They arrived at the audience Wednesday dressed as cardinals, Swiss Guards and the pope himself.