VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis has taken away some of the privileges of conservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke, such as a large subsidized apartment and his salary, according to a senior Vatican official on Tuesday.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that the pope made the announcement to senior aides during a regular Vatican meeting last week.
The pope was quoted as saying that Burke, one of his harshest critics, was “working against the Church and against the papacy” and that he had caused “disunity” in the Church.
Burke has not held a high-ranking Vatican position for years. He is a consultant to one of its tribunals, as are many other cardinals who live outside Rome, and he spends most of his time in his home state of Wisconsin.
The official at the meeting denied reports that Francis had called the 75-year-old Burke “an enemy”.
Burke is admired by traditionalists in the Church, particularly in the United States, where he frequently appears on conservative Catholic media outlets that have made criticizing the pope a regular feature of their operations.
This was the second time this month that Francis has taken action against a conservative American clergyman.
On Nov. 11, the pope removed another conservative critic, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, after Strickland refused to step down following a Vatican investigation.
While conservatives are a minority in the Church, they carry significant influence in advanced countries like the United States, in part due to their ties to conservative politics.
Burke has been resisting the pope’s reforms almost since the beginning.
In 2014, a year after Francis was chosen, the pope removed Burke as the head of a Vatican tribunal and reassigned him to a largely ceremonial post just days after Burke compared the Church under Francis to “a ship without a rudder”.
Most recently, in October, Burke was one of five cardinals who openly opposed a global month-long Vatican meeting, known as a synod.
Before the meeting began, Burke was the main speaker at a gathering of conservatives in a theater just a few blocks from the Vatican.
There, he called for a defense against the “the poison of confusion, error and division” in the Church.
A person close to Burke said the cardinal had not been officially informed of the pope’s decision, which was first reported by the conservative Italian outlet, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
