Archbishop Burke Speaks about Papal Visit, by Tim Townsend, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 2008

Archbishop Burke Speaks about Papal Visit

By Tim Townsend
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
April 17, 2008

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/religion/story/6CD3216EB8C1410F8625742E00087C71?OpenDocument

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke said Wednesday evening that there was "a tremendous excitement" in Washington over the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, "and a tremendous sense of being loved, that the father of the universal church has come to us."

Burke spoke in a conference call with St. Louis media outlets immediately after Benedict addressed him and his brother bishops from around the nation. In his address, the pope tackled a number of issues, including the clergy sexual abuse crisis, immigration, the influence of secularism on American culture, health care and the importance of marriage.

April 16, 2008 --Pope Benedict XVI (L) and Donald Wuerl (R), Archbishop of Washington, attend vespers in the Crypt Church at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Photo by Vincenzo Pinto

Burke said there was "a uniting link" to the topics in Benedict's address. "It was his concept of telling us as bishops that religion cannot be divorced from public life," Burke said. "Our religious convictions have to serve the common good. He touched a wide range of issues — immigrants, human life, the evil of pornography — and emphasized for us to be creative and courageous in addressing the Gospel to the circumstances of everyday public life."

In his address, Benedict said that responding to the clergy sexual abuse scandal has not been easy for the church and admitted that it was sometimes badly handled by bishops. He told the bishops to "bind up wounds, foster healing, and promote reconciliation."

"In some places, it was handled very badly," Burke said. "It's a source of shame and deepest sorrow and it never should have happened in the church. We will help those who suffered in any way, and we will take all possible precautions to make sure it never happens again."

On Thursday, Benedict will meet with the heads of Catholic colleges and universities, and the superintendents for Catholic education for all 195 U.S. dioceses. Burke said he hoped the pope would encourage his efforts to keep Catholic schools in the archdiocese going, especially those in financial difficulty.

Burke also said he hoped the pope would speak about Catholic identity at Catholic schools, specifically at the university level where the faculties are made up largely of non-Catholics.

"The church has always believed that a solid body of professors at a Catholic university should be Catholic," he said. "It's not fair to expect the body of a faculty who don't have a significant number of Catholics to sustain a Catholic identity...It's simply a contradiction where you have a university and someone can speak openly against fundamental teachings of Catholic church."

Burke said that he would take Benedict's address to heart and bring home to St. Louis the message that the pope brought to his American bishops. "These are directions that come to us from the highest authority in the church," he said. "They will become meditations for me in my own pastoral activity in the archdiocese."