Raymond Leo Burke

Raymond Leo Burke (born June 30, 1948) is an American prelate of the Catholic Church.

Burke was born on June 30, 1948, in Richland Center, Wisconsin, the youngest of the six children of Thomas F. and Marie B. Burke.

He is of Irish heritage with ancestors from Cork and Tipperary.

Burke attended St. Mary's Parish School in Richland Center from 1954 to 1959.

From 1962 to 1968, he attended Holy Cross Seminary in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

From 1968 to 1971, he studied at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., as a Basselin scholar, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1970 and a Master of Arts degree in 1971, both in philosophy.

He has criticized what he sees as deficiencies in the post-1969 Mass of Paul VI.

He is frequently seen as a de facto leader of the church's conservative wing.

Burke has publicly clashed with Pope Francis, vigorously opposing attempts by other bishops to relax church attitudes towards gay people and those Catholics who have divorced and remarried outside the church.

Burke has opined that Catholic politicians who support legalized abortion, including presidential candidate John Kerry and President Joe Biden, should not receive the Eucharist.

While Burke has denied allegations of disloyalty to Pope Francis, a number of Burke's statements have been interpreted as criticisms, once mentioning the possible need to "formally correct" the pope in relation to Amoris laetitia. This has led to a backlash from some Catholics towards Burke.

He completed studies for the priesthood at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome between 1971 and 1975, receiving a Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree and a Master of Arts degree.

Pope Paul VI ordained Burke to the priesthood on June 29, 1975, in St. Peter's Basilica.

After his ordination to the priesthood, Burke was assigned as assistant rector of the Cathedral of St. Joseph the Workman in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

From 1980 to 1984, Burke studied canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he received a licentiate in canon law in 1982 and a doctorate in canon law in 1984.

He then returned to La Crosse where he was named the Moderator of the Curia and Vice Chancellor of the La Crosse diocese.

In 1989, Pope John Paul II named Burke the first American Defender of the Bond of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest ecclesiastical court in the Catholic Church.

On December 10, 1994, Pope John Paul II named Burke as bishop of the Diocese of La Crosse and consecrated him on January 6, 1995, at St. Peter's Basilica.

Burke took possession of the see of La Crosse on February 22, 1995.

He also taught religion at Aquinas High School in La Crosse (where a new addition was named the Bishop Burke Hall in his honor in 1997 and then in 2011 was renamed the Cardinal Burke Hall).

In 2000, Burke convened the fifth diocesan synod for the Diocese of La Crosse, which resulted in the publication of Synod V, acts: celebrated June 11–14, 2000 in 2003.

In 2002, he was influential in founding the Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem, an order of Augustinian canons dedicated to the Tridentine Mass, the traditional form of the liturgy in the Latin Church.

Two anonymous priests in the Diocese of La Crosse said that Burke's leadership was divisive.

People in his diocese had divided opinions of him.

One such example was the construction of the $25 million Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, with critics saying that the money used should have gone to the poor, while Burke defended the move as a fruitful way to raise spiritual devotion.

Another was the diocese's withdrawal from Church World Service's annual Crop Walk because some of the money raised was being used to purchase condoms in developing countries.

Burke also welcomed numerous traditional orders to his diocese, including the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP), whose priests offer exclusively the Tridentine Mass.

He led the Archdiocese of St. Louis from 2004 to 2008 and the Diocese of La Crosse from 1995 to 2004.

From 2008 to 2014, he was the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

A canon lawyer, Burke is perceived as a voice of traditionalism among prelates of the Catholic Church.

He established a reputation as a conservative leader while serving in La Crosse and St. Louis.

Burke is a major proponent of the Tridentine Mass, having frequently offered it and conferred ordinations on traditionalist priests.

(In 2012, an addition to the school was named the Raymond Cardinal Burke Annex in his honor.) The family later moved to Stratford, Wisconsin.

He is a bishop and a cardinal, and was a patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta from 2014 to 2023.

In September 2015, the Vatican announced that Burke had been reappointed to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, from which he had been removed in December 2013, but not to his more influential positions on the Congregation for Bishops and the Apostolic Signatura.

In 2016, he was not reappointed as a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship.

In February 2017, Burke was again sidelined when Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu as his special delegate to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, with exclusive responsibility for the duties which would normally be exercised by Burke as its patron.

Albrecht von Boeselager, the order's grand chancellor, announced that this meant Burke was "de facto suspended" from the patronage.

Pope Francis reappointed him as a rank-and-file member of the Apostolic Signatura in September 2017.

In November 2023, Pope Francis reportedly evicted Burke from his subsidized Vatican apartment and removed his salary as a retired cardinal.