(LifeSiteNews) — Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has declined to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Archdiocese of Chicago after a massive backlash over his support for abortion, including criticism from numerous U.S. Catholic bishops.

Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, announced Durbin’s decision in a statement released on September 30.

Cupich wrote that he is “saddened by this news” but respects Durbin’s decision.

“But I want to make clear that the decision to present him an award was specifically in recognition of his singular contribution to immigration reform and his unwavering support of immigrants, which is so needed in our day,” he added.

“Total condemnation is not the way forward, for it shuts down discussion.”

The cardinal said that the political divide among Catholics in the U.S. on issues such as abortion and immigration “significantly hamper[s] the church’s efforts to promote human dignity across the full range of issues.”

Cupich then attempted to equate the murder of the unborn with the sufferings of death row inmates and those affected by “climate change” and poverty.

“Indeed, the child in the womb, the sick and elderly, the migrant and refugee, the death row inmate, those already suffering from climate change and generational poverty will continue to be at risk if we, as Catholics, do not start talking to each other respectfully and work together,” he stated.

Cupich’s equation of abortion to other issues that are not intrinsically evil, such as migration policy, the death penalty, or policies regarding the environment, is in clear contradiction to Catholic teaching and Tradition.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in his 2004 memo on Communion and pro-abortion politicians: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.… There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not, however, with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”

On the same day Cupich announced Durbin would decline the award, Pope Leo XIV appeared to defend Cupich’s decision to honor the pro-abortion politician.

“I think that it is very important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during … 40 years of service in the United States Senate,” he stated.

Leo then made the same erroneous equation of abortion to the death penalty and migration policy.

“Someone who says I’m against abortion but says I’m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” the Pope said. “Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

Cupich’s decision to honor Durbin caused a global backlash from faithful Catholics. Ten U.S. bishops publicly criticized the move.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, said the decision to honor Durbin was “gravely mistaken” and “absurd” since Durbin “has spent his time in office denying the human dignity of the unborn and undermining solidarity with the weakest and most vulnerable among us.”

“The planned honor is titled a ‘lifetime achievement award’ and the event where Durbin is to receive it is called the ‘Keep Hope Alive’ benefit. This is darkly ironic because the slaughter of the innocents in utero is nihilistic and always without hope, and the policies Durbin has supported have denied a lifetime to countless unborn children,” Paprocki wrote.

According to the National Catholic Register’s Jonathan Liedl, two meetings of pro-life Catholic groups chaired by Cupich were recently “postponed indefinitely,” likely due to the cardinal’s controversial decision, showing the wide-ranging implications of the heterodox move.

READ: Two Cupich meetings with Catholic leaders ‘postponed indefinitely’: report