The man sitting a few feet away from me – spry and youthful for his 68 years, polite, unflappable – does not look like a firebrand. But Cardinal Blase Cupich has been a controversial figure since at least 2011, when as Bishop of Spokane he discouraged his priests and seminarians from attending pro-life vigils. More recently, he has argued that reception of Communion ultimately depends on an individual’s “conscience” – which observers have struggled to reconcile with the Church’s prohibitions regarding, say, pro-abortion politicians or the divorced and remarried. More controversially yet, the Cardinal has claimed Pope Francis’s support for his views.

Some have criticised Pope Francis’s approach for what they see as a carelessness over doctrine. Similar criticisms surround his handling of the abuse crisis, especially in Chile where he rebuked abuse survivors who accused a local bishop of having turned a blind eye. The Pope’s senior adviser on child protection, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, publicly criticised Francis for causing “great pain for survivors of sexual abuse.” But Cardinal Cupich, when I mention his fellow American’s remarks, praises the Pope for sending an investigator to Chile.

“I think that now the Holy Father sees that by sending Archbishop Scicluna, that we have to listen to those who have come forward and made accusations,” he says. “I’m pleased the Holy Father did that.”

There’s a queue of journalists waiting to meet Cardinal Cupich – on my way in I pass the editor of the Tablet coming out, and I’m about to be followed by a well-known papal biographer – so I press on. St John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and every other Pope who has spoken plainly on the subject, taught that the Church is unable to give Communion to those who are divorced and civilly remarried, if they are in a sexual relationship with their new partner. On Cardinal Cupich’s reading of Amoris Laetitia, an individual’s conscience can override that teaching. Isn’t that a contradiction?

Not so, says the cardinal. “What John Paul II did in [his 1981 apostolic exhortation] Familiaris Consortio and also with the Code of Canon Law, in removing the status of excommunication from somebody who is in a second marriage, was a development that in fact was more significant than what the Pope is for doing now. Because once you begin to say that even though they’re in this quote/unquote sinful, irregular situation, they’re still part of the Church, they’re not excommunicated any more, even though they were before. So that was a change.”

This analogy, as the cardinal acknowledges, was first drawn by Rocco Buttiglione, but it has been criticised for historical inaccuracy. As the canon lawyer Edward Peters, an adviser to the Holy See’s highest court, wrote in a response to Buttiglione: “John Paul II never lifted any excommunication against divorced and remarried Catholics because, quite simply, there was no excommunication against divorced and remarried Catholics for him to lift.” It has certainly never been taught as perennially binding, whereas the doctrine on Communion has been repeatedly affirmed as – in the words of Cardinal Ratzinger, approved by St John Paul II – a “binding” practise which “cannot be modified because of different situations.” The excommunication story doesn’t resolve the contradiction, does it?

“Yes,” he replies, “but I would go back and say, we have always made the distinction between something that is gravely, objectively evil, and the subjective culpability.”

I’m tempted to point out that John Paul and Benedict dismissed this distinction as beside the point – but the clock is ticking so I ask something else. If people in sexual relationships outside marriages are encouraged to receive the Eucharist, there is a very high risk of unworthy Communions. Isn’t His Eminence worried about sacrilege?

“No, no,” says the cardinal, courteous as ever, “give us two minutes. Well, again I think that, don’t we all say before we go to Communion, we are not worthy? All of us say that. So let’s not make it just about divorced and remarried people, or people who are committing sins of the flesh. There’s an unworthiness in terms of greed, jealousy, backbiting, calumny against people.”

The lecture, delivered to a full house, echoes with declarations of momentous change, “significant shifts,” “a major shift in our ministerial approach that is nothing short of revolutionary.” Pastors must be “immersed” in “concrete” situations, Cardinal Cupich says.

And then he drops a bombshell – at least, it may be a bombshell. “The voice of conscience – the voice of God,” the cardinal announces, “could very well affirm the necessity of living at some distance from the Church’s understanding of the ideal.”

Some theologians argue that the central question in debates over Amoris Laetitia is the act of contrition: the requirement that to be forgiven for a sin – and so open the way to Communion – one must confess it and say, “By the help of Your grace, I will try not to sin again.” I ask Cardinal Cupich whether this is a helpful principle.

“Yes,” he says, “part of the rite of reconciliation, the confession of sins, the Sacrament of Penance, is [to] have a firm commitment not to sin again.” That sounds affirmative enough. But then he adds: “It’s just the next best step that I can take, here and now, in the present moment, that God is calling me to. And that’s the firm purpose of amendment, it seems to me, that has to be made.”