‘Cardinal Burke is My Enemy’ Says Pope Francis

Cardinal Raymond Burke

CV NEWS FEED // Pope Francis reportedly told the heads of dicasteries of the Roman Curia last week that “Cardinal Burke is my enemy,” according to a report from the Daily Compass. 

According to the news outlet, “a Vatican source revealed” Pope Francis’ sharp rebuke and that the Holy Father planned to take away the Cardinal’s flat and salary. 

The report continued:

As far as we are aware, Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, currently in the United States, has not yet received a formal notice confirming the Pope’s words, but given the precedents – most recently the case of Monsignor Georg Ganswein, former personal secretary of Pope Benedict XVI – there is little doubt that words will be followed by deeds.

Burke has clashed with the Holy Father on many issues regarding doctrine and Church Tradition. The controversial publication of the three dubia submitted to Pope Francis, which Burke co-authored, is the most recent example of conflict between the two.  

Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith Cardinal Manuel Fernandez launched a personal critique against Burke on the Pope’s behalf in an exclusive email interview with the National Catholic Register following the publication of the dubia. 

In the interview, Fernandez told the Register correspondent Edward Pentin that Pope Francis has a duty not only “to guard and preserve the ‘static’ deposit of faith, but also a second, unique charism only given to Peter and his successors, which is ‘a living and active gift.’”

“I do not have this charism, nor do you, nor does Cardinal [Raymond] Burke. Today only Pope Francis has it,” Fernandez stated. “Now, if you tell me that some bishops have a special gift of the Holy Spirit to judge the doctrine of the Holy Father, we will enter into a vicious circle (where anyone can claim to have the true doctrine) and that would be heresy and schism.”

In September 2021, Francis was caught on video smrking as he made a snide comment at Burke’s expense, who was seriously ill with Covid, saying: “even in the College of Cardinals, there are deniers [of the vaccines] and one of them, poor man, is hospitalized with the virus.”  

In December 2013, Pope Francis removed Burke from the Congregation of Bishops and replaced him with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, known for his left-leaning policies and being an ally of the disgraced former Cardinal Theofore McCarrick. \The Pope’s comments and threats of retaliation against the Cardinal come in the wake of the most recent controversy of Bishop Joseph Strickland’s removal from Tyler, Texas, fueling claims of the pope’s antipathy towards the Church in the United States.