Burke Leaving St. Louis, by Tim Townsend, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 28, 2008

Burke Leaving St. Louis

By Tim Townsend
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
June 28, 2008

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/religion/story/34E7BE86250B0B0B862574760010B1E6?OpenDocument

Archbishop Raymond Burke may have been the most polarizing leader in the history of the Roman Catholic Church in St. Louis. With Pope Benedict XVI's announcement Friday that Burke will head the Vatican's highest judicial court, Burke also may be the most powerful Catholic alumnus St. Louis has ever seen.

Burke — who as of 5 a.m. Friday was no longer the archbishop of St. Louis — is the first American to head the Vatican's version of the supreme court.

Archbishop Raymond L. Burke is leaving the St. Louis Archdiocese.
Photo by Teresa Prince/P-D

The Rev. Thomas Reese, of the Woodstock Theological Institute at Georgetown University, said the appointment is evidence that Benedict continues to reach into the American hierarchy for help governing the church.

In 2005, Benedict named Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and has since elevated him to cardinal.

"Those two positions are the highest of any American in the Vatican in a long time," said Reese. "Certainly (Burke) is going to get a red hat. He's going to be made a cardinal."

At a press conference Friday at the Cardinal Rigali Center in Shrewsbury, Burke was less sure about the red hat. "That is completely up to Pope Benedict XVI," he said.

The news conference was emotional for Burke, who turns 60 on Monday.

"This is a bittersweet time for me. In the 4 years and 5 months I've been here I've come to really love this archdiocese, and it's sad for me to leave ...," he said, choking up.

It was a side of Burke many in St. Louis had never seen. While his supporters who packed the Rigali Center's auditorium repeatedly applauded the man as he spoke and later waited in line — with those same bittersweet emotions — to congratulate him, other Catholics were breathing a sigh of relief. The archbishop they saw as rigid and old-fashioned was moving on.

After noon Mass Friday at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Clayton, Amy Kelly said she felt Burke could have better handled such issues as the battle over St. Stanislaus Kostka church and statements on denying Holy Communion to politicians who publicly support abortion rights.

"I think he divided a lot of Catholics," said Kelly, of Richmond Heights. "He was sometimes unnecessarily divisive."

The Rev. Lawrence Biondi, president of St. Louis University who has had a couple of run-ins with Burke over the years, issued a curt statement Friday: "I wish him well."

AUXILIARY TAKES OVER

On Friday afternoon, the archdiocese announced that auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann will run the everyday business of the roughly 450,000-member archdiocese until Burke's replacement is named.

Hermann, 73, said Friday that he was grateful for the time Burke was in St. Louis.

"He made us stronger by emphasizing church teaching and by applying that teaching," he said. "He is inspirational, he is kind and he is bright, and having him here was a tremendous blessing for all of us in the archdiocese."

Typically, when a bishop is named to a new diocese, there is plenty of time for the Vatican to choose a successor because the outgoing bishop is still available to run the diocese. Burke said he will leave St. Louis for Rome at the end of August, but that because St. Louis is an archdiocese, the Vatican would be apt to name a successor soon. He would not mention candidates but said he would consult privately with Benedict to recommend bishops who would fit well in St. Louis.

The timing of Burke's new position — not even five years into his tenure in St. Louis — is more of a surprise than the position itself. The archbishop worked on the staff of the Vatican's high court, called the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, for five years before being named bishop of LaCrosse, Wis., his home diocese, in 1995. In 2006, Benedict named Burke to be one of the 15 judges on the Signatura.

Earlier this month, the pope named Burke to two Vatican offices, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, which interprets canon law, and the Congregation for the Clergy, which regulates the formation and training of diocesan priests and deacons.

"It's the respect the pope and Vatican officials have for him as canon lawyer that has gotten him this job," Reese said. "The pastoral skills needed to run a diocese are not needed as the head of the Signatura."

CONTROVERSIES

Burke presided over several controversies during his St. Louis tenure, news of which often traveled far from the borders of his own archdiocese to become national stories. As a result, many St. Louisans and some Americans — Catholic or not — viewed Burke through the lens of controversy.

He battled the lay board of St. Stanislaus, declaring its members and the priest they hired excommunicated.

He resigned from the board of Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center Foundation over the appearance of singer Sheryl Crow at a benefit concert because of her support for embryonic stem cell research.

He spoke out against Catholic politicians who legislate contrary to church teaching on abortion, and strongly advocated refusing them Communion.

Burke said Friday that it was "no revelation to anyone, that I haven't dealt in the best possible way with the media. ... I've been frustrated at times."

He said he felt he had been inaccurately characterized as "unpleasant" and "arrogant," especially when he first arrived in St. Louis.

"I hope that people have come to understand that for all the faults that I have that I wanted to be a very loving shepherd for the flock here," he said.

When asked if had any regrets, he cited two, saying he regretted that they happened, but not how he handled them. The continuing battle with St. Stanislaus was one. He said he hoped that his successor would be able to bring the matter to a close.

PUNISHING A NUN

The other was the ordination of two women as "Roman Catholic Womenpriests" at a synagogue in St. Louis. The two women were declared excommunicated by Burke. In one of his last acts as archbishop, Burke imposed the penalty of interdict on Sister Louis Lears, a nun in the order of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, who works at St. Cronan's parish in St. Louis and who attended the women's ordinations last fall. The interdict prohibits Lears from receiving the sacraments and forced St. Cronan's to remove her from her ministry at the church.

At the Rigali Center Friday morning, Burke appeared anything but the strict disciplinarian his detractors portray him as. He said he was happiest in the small moments that never made headlines — sharing in celebrations with individual parishes, confirming young Catholics, ordaining deacons.

And most especially, spending time with his seminarians at Kenrick-Glennon. "These have been the greatest sources of happiness to me," he said.

"Like the father of a family, there are times when you have to make tough decisions for the good order of the family, and I've had to make some difficult decisions during my time here," he continued. "And those decisions I've made according to the best light of my conscience with only the good of the archdiocese, and of the church, in mind."

ttownsend@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8221