The Pope: “Leave the house and salary of Cardinal Burke.”

“Cardinal Burke is my enemy, so I treat him for his apartment and salary.” This is what Pope Francis allegedly said in the meeting with the Heads of Dicastery of the Roman Curia last November 20, and which a Vatican source revealed to Daily compass. The indiscretion was later confirmed by other sources. As far as we know, Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, currently in the United States, has not yet received a formal notification confirming the Pope’s words, but given the precedents – the most recent being the case of Monsignor Georg Ganswein, former secretary staff of the Pope. Benedict XVI – there is little doubt that words will be followed by deeds. Nor would the difficulty of canonically justifying such a measure be an obstacle, given the contempt for the laws of the Church that Pope Francis also shows on the occasion of the expulsion of bishops from his dioceses (see. here).

The supposed enmity of Cardinal Burke has become a real obsession for Pope Francis in recent times, but in reality the American cardinal has been in the spotlight since the beginning of his pontificate, probably because he encapsulates some of the elements that bother him most: he is American and is a constant reminder of the doctrine and the Tradition of the Church; moreover, he resides in Rome, a stone’s throw from Saint Peter’s Square, from where – the Pope will think – he can ‘conspire’ against him.

Certainly, Burke has been very clear in his criticism of the concept of synodalitywhich has now become a mantra destined to change the nature of the Church, and at the conference ‘La Babel synodal’ last October 3, organized in Rome by the compass precisely the eve of the opening of the Synod on synodality, his arguments and his direct controversy with the new Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Víctor “Tucho” Fernández, who had described Cardinal Burke as a heretic and schismatic and those who ask the Pope to “safeguard and promote the depositum fidei”, had made many noise After all, calling the Pope to task is part of the cardinals’ duty, and Francis himself has repeatedly (in words) encouraged the parousia.

And Cardinal Burke has always steadfastly rejected the label “enemy of the Pope” who have wanted to cling to him since the beginning of the pontificate, especially since he criticized the position of Cardinal Walter Kasper who, in preparation for the 2014 Synod on the Family, explicitly asked for access to communion for divorced remarried. Burke was in good company, but it was mainly against him that a veritable campaign of demonization was focused, painted as the director of hidden plots against Pope Francis (accusations that Burke has always strongly rejected).

Before that, however, in December 2013, the Pope had already withdrawn it as a member of the Congregation of Bishops, replacing him with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, decidedly liberal and, as it happens, linked to former serial abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. And after his participation in the book “Abiding in the truth of Christ” (which also had the contributions of Cardinals Caffarra, Brandmüller, Müller and De Paolis) Burke, who is a talented canon, was also dismissed in November 2014 from the position of Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura to which he had been called by Benedict XVI in 2008. Instead, he was entrusted with the position of patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta, a minor position for a still young and active cardinal. Nevertheless, after the signing of the Dubia after the post-synodal Exhortation The joy of love (2016), the ‘retaliation’ against Cardinal Burke continued, and in 2017 he was effectively stripped of his position as patron of the Order of Malta, with the appointment of a special delegate of the Pope: first Cardinal Becciu and then in 2020 the cardinal. Thomas Although he no longer had any contact with the members of the Order and had no role in the whole troubled renewal of the Statutes, Cardinal Burke formally resigned in June this year, having reached the fateful age of 75 , and was immediately replaced by the 81-year-old. old Cardinal Ghirlanda: just to add insult to injury.

Meanwhile, however, in recent years Pope Francis has never been absent an opportunity to throw personal jabs at Cardinal Burke, climaxing with the unfortunate (to put it mildly) quip delivered while Cardinal Burke was fighting life and death from Covid: “Even in the College of Cardinals there are some naysayers.” said the Pope with a satisfied smile in the press conference of the plane that was returning from its trip to Hungary and Slovakia on September 15, 2021, “and one of them, the poor guy, is hospitalized with the virus.

Second round of Dubia, presented last July along with Cardinals Brandmüller, Sarah, Zen and Sandoval, but only made public on October 2, will no doubt have further irritated the Pope, who appears to have let go of his inhibitions after the death of Benedict XVI last January. Thus, the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fernández, was able to personally target Cardinal Burke in the aforementioned interview with the National Catholic Registry in September in what, in retrospect, can be considered a warning.

And now we come to the Pope’s announced decision to directly attack Cardinal Burke, take away his apartment and salary, a serious and unprecedented measure, defying all legal and ecclesiastical principles. One might think that the real purpose is to remove Burke from Rome, weakening the camp of those who resist the ongoing revolution, as a Conclave approaches, but it is also a warning to those working in the Roman curia. The fact is that the end of this pontificate is more and more similar in its methods to a South American dictatorship.