VATICAN CITY
Talking Points Memo

ASSOCIATED PRESS – DECEMBER 17, 2013

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Pope Francis announced changes in the influential Vatican office that evaluates and nominates candidates for bishop around the world.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington was appointed Monday to the Congregation for Bishops. The pope also reconfirmed Cardinal William Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco and former head of the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog office.

Some members of the congregation were very conspicuously not retained. Cardinal Raymond Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis, will no longer serve in the office.

Burke is considered an outspoken critic of abortion and same-sex marriage and a favorite of conservative Catholics. He has also been publicly critical of Francis’s changes in the direction of the church. Burke retains his position as the head of the Vatican high court, the Apostolic Signatura.

Burke drew attention in the U.S. in 2004…