Speaking from Rome last week, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke put the kibosh on rumors that he was meeting with Pope Benedict XVI to receive a new appointment to become archbishop of New York.

“I can assure you that’s not the case,” he told the Post-Dispatch, laughing. “This trip has been planned for months.”

Burke said he was in Rome to take part in the second International Congress-Pilgrimage for consecrated virgins.

Rumors about whom will succeed Cardinal Edward Egan as the archbishop of New York have swirled since Egan reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 last year. In April the cardinal turned 76 and it’s believed Benedict will name his replacement in the coming months.

Burke has been the archbishop of St. Louis for nearly 4.5 years, and will turn 60 in June. He’s been involved with the consecrated virgin movement since before being installed in St. Louis, serving as the group’s official liason with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Last week, Burke traveled with about 30 U.S. consecrated virgins to Rome for the pilgrimage. Catholic News Agency and Catholic News Service reported that 500 virgins from around the world came to Rome for the conference. Benedict met with them last Thursday, and “encouraged them to be witnesses of the industrious hope, of joy, and of peace that comes from their total gift of self,” according to CNA.

Benedict’s words, from CNA:

Although the Order of Virgins exists in the Church now, Benedict XVI noted that it wasn’t until Vatican Council II that this way of life resurfaced in the Church. “However, it has ancient roots that go back to the beginnings of evangelical life when, in an unprecedented novelty, the hearts of certain women began to open to a desire for consecrated virginity: in other words, the desire to give one’s entire being to God, which had had its first extraordinary fulfillment in the Virgin of Nazareth and her ‘yes’,” he said.

“Your charism must reflect the intensity, but also the freshness, of its origins,” said Benedict XVI noting how, “when it came into being, the charism did not involve a particular way of life. Little by little, however, it was institutionalized, finally becoming a full public and solemn consecration conferred by the bishop through an inspirational liturgical rite that made the consecrated woman ’sponsa Christi’, an image of the Church as bride.”

Consecrated virginity also has its own uniqueness that “is profoundly rooted in the particular Church to which you belong. … From the diocese, with its traditions, its saints, its values, limits and difficulties, you open up to the scope of the Universal Church, sharing particularly in her liturgical prayer,” he said.

When virgins join themselves to the Universal Church in this way, the Pope explained that their “prayerful ‘I’ progressively broadens out, until in the prayer there is nothing more than a great ‘we’. … In your dialogue with God, open yourselves to dialogue with all creatures.”

“The choice of virginal life,” the Holy Father concluded, “is an allusion to the transitory nature of earthly things and an anticipation of future good. Be witnesses of vigilant and industrious hope, of joy, of the peace that belongs to those who abandon themselves to the love of God. Be present in the world, yet pilgrims on the journey to the Kingdom.”