Who is Raymond Burke, the fierce critic of Pope Francis who met with him privately

This Friday, the 29th Pope Francis received one of its fiercest critics. Conservative North American Cardinal Raymond Burke participated, for the first time in seven years, in a private audience with the Supreme Pontiff just a month after being deprived of some of his privileges in the Vatican.

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Both the Pope’s office and Burke declined to give details about what they discussed during the meeting. The 75-year-old cardinal, however, responded briefly “well I’m still alive” when questioned by the press on the streets of Rome.

In November, Francis announced to Vatican authorities that he had decided to strip Burke of several of his privileges at the Holy See, including the subsidy he was given to rent an apartment.

At that meeting, the Pope would have explained that he made the decision because Burke was “working against the Church and against the papacy” and that he had sown the “disunity” at church.

Burke, 75, was for years one of the most representative faces of Catholic conservatism in the Vatican. (VATICAN MEDIA / REUTERS/)

Born in Wisconsin (United States) in 1948, Burke graduated in philosophy from Holy Cross Seminary in La Crosse and later completed a master’s degree in the same field at the Catholic University of America.

He was ordained a priest by Pope Paul VI in 1975 and five years later he obtained a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Gregorian University.

In 1994 he was named bishop and in 2003 archbishop of San Luis. During the papacy of Benedict XVI, Burke was chosen prefect of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, the most important court in the Catholic Church.

In 2010, with Ratzinger still in office, Burke received the cardinal’s ring.

Over the years, the cardinal has become one of the toughest voices within Catholic conservatism. In this sense, he did not hesitate to repeatedly criticize Francis, who is seen by the most traditionalists as someone who endangers the foundations of the Church due to his reforms.

In June of this year, Burke retired but kept among his privileges a salary of between 5,000 and 6,000 euros per month, in addition to the apartment that was later taken by the Pope, which was a property measuring more than 400 square meters. few meters from São Pedro Square.

Pope Benedict XVI named Burke cardinal in 2010. (ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP/)

Despite the reform, the former cardinal was one of the signatories, together with the German Walter Brandmueller, the Mexican Juan Sandoval and the Guinean Robert Sarah, as well as the archbishop emeritus of Hong Kong Joseph Zen, of a letter addressed to Francis around five doubts that remained in relation to the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod this year.

The day before the start of the Synod, he also participated in the conference “A Babel Synodal”, where they harshly criticized the assembly called by the Pope.

Some of the points that most concerned Burke and the rest of the panel were “that Blessing homosexual couples could create confusion, not only by making them appear analogous to marriage, but because homosexual acts would be presented as a good.”, in addition to the opportunity for lay people to vote in the Synod, including women.

Source: Elcomercio