VATICAN CITY
Telegraph (UK)
By Nick Squires, Rome 18 Oct 2014
Pope Francis is about to demote an arch-conservative cardinal who has been bitterly opposed to his reformist agenda and his call for greater acceptance of gays and divorcees in the Catholic Church.
The sidelining of American cardinal Raymond Burke comes against a backdrop of acute differences of opinion among nearly 200 bishops and cardinals who for the last two weeks have been discussing issues relating to the family at a synod, or assembly, at the Vatican.
The move suggests that the Pope, who has upset many within the Catholic Church with his call for a more flexible and “merciful” approach towards gay people and divorcees, is determined to purge the Vatican of some of his more trenchant critics.
Cardinal Burke, who has strongly criticised Pope Francis’s more open attitude towards homosexuals, is currently head of the Vatican’s highest court of canon law.
But he said he is preparing to be given a new, much lower profile role as the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta, a Catholic charity based in Rome that traces its origins back to the Crusades.
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