St. Louis emeritus Archbishop Raymond Burke

Pope Benedict XVI named St. Louis emeritus Archbishop Raymond Burke to the Vatican’s influential Congregation for Bishops on Saturday.

The congregation, or Vatican office, is responsible for recommending Roman Catholic bishop candidates around the world to the pope.  Over time - and Burke is only 61 - the Congregation’s members can have a significant impact on the direction of the Catholic church.

Burke will join another former St. Louis archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali, at the Congregation for Bishops. He’ll be the fifth American member of the office.

Burke left St. Louis to become the prefect, or leader, of the Apostolic Signatura - often described as the Vatican’s version of the Supreme Court. Burke also is a member of two other 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.

Whispers in the…

Joseph R. Cistone, the new bishop of the Diocese of Saginaw, speaks during his introductory press conference at the Center for Ministry in Saginaw Township. The Saginaw News.

On Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI named an auxiliary bishop from Philadelphia - Joseph Cistone - to replace Robert Carlson as the new bishop of Saginaw, Mich. The pope named Carlson archbishop-elect of St. Louis just four weeks ago - nine months after he named former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke to a prominent Vatican position.

Carlson’s installation is scheduled for June 10.

“It was a great surprise to find out the Holy Father was entrusting me to serve as a diocesan bishop,” said the 60-year-old  Cistone, at his news conference in Saginaw Wednesday, according to the Saginaw News. “The speed of the announcement took me by surprise, too.”

The News gave a hint of Carlson’s trademark sense of humor,

Leader in Saginaw for four years, Carlson introduced Cistone to a stunned crowd of…

St. Louis Archbishop-elect Robert J. Carlson

Pope Benedict XVI has named Robert James Carlson as the next Roman Catholic archbishop of St. Louis.

The 64-year-old archbishop-elect has led the Saginaw, Mich. diocese since 2005. He will be the 10th ordinary, or leader, of St. Louis Catholics since 1827.

Carlson’s new assignment was announced publicly at 5:18 a.m. St. Louis time on the Vatican’s website.

Carlson was also the bishop of Sioux Falls, SD for ten years before his tenure in Michigan. He succeeds Archbishop Raymond Burke, whose four-and-a-half year tenure as St. Louis Catholic leader ended in June when the pope named him to lead the Vatican’s supreme court.

Like Burke, Carlson is trained as a canon, or church, lawyer. Burke is now the head of the Vatican’s version of the supreme court.

From the Saginaw diocese’s website:

A native of Minneapolis, Minn., he was ordained to the priesthood on May 23, 1970 for the Archdiocese of St.…

Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has issued a statement rebuking Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, for a video Terry presented Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington.

The video is of an interview [part 1 & part 2] Terry conducted with Burke, now the head of the Vatican’s supreme court, earlier this month in Rome during which the archbishop said that President Barack Obama’s concept of hope was “very disturbing.” But in his statement today, Burke didn’t apologize for his remarks about American politics. Instead, he apologized to his brother bishops.

Michael Sean Winters of America magazine was at the press conference with Terry Wednesday. He writes that Burke’s failure to defend his brother bishops during the interview in the face of Terry’s, Burke “was the Vatican equivalent of throwing them under the bus.”

Here is the text of Burke’s statement:

ROME, Italy - In response to the…

Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke

Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke’s recent criticisms of American politicians who support abortion rights continued today. In the past Burke has chastised members of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. senators, presidential candidates, potential presidential cabinet picks and the entire Democratic party. This time he’s condemning the president himself.

In a 12-minute interview shown today at the National Press Club in Washington [transcript here], Burke said President Barack Obama’s popularity - both in the U.S. and in the rest of the world - has the capacity to make him “an agent of death.”

“President Obama uses this word ‘hope’ in a way that for us is very disturbing,” Burke said in the interview.

We need to have hope, the hope that is founded in Jesus Christ, alive for us in the Church; Jesus Christ who gave His life for everyone without exception, and with a particular love for…

Archbishop Raymond Burke

Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke is scheduled to be deposed by lawyers for St. Stanislaus Kostka Church on Thursday.

The deposition is part of an ongoing legal battle between the St. Louis Archdiocese and the historically Polish church just north of downtown St. Louis.

George von Stamwitz, attorney for St. Stanislaus, said Monday that he was waiting for more documents from the archdiocese, but that two litigators for his firm would be traveling to Wisconsin to take Burke’s deposition.

Bernard Huger, an attorney for the archdiocese, confirmed that Burke was due to be deposed this week.

Burke is scheduled to be in La Crosse this week for events surrounding the Dec. 12 feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the shrine he founded near his hometown.

In July, the archdiocese and former St. Stanislaus parishioners, including former board members, sued the church, asking a judge to restore the structure that existed before its board…

church-and-mosque-in-sweden http://www.tukler.com/bildhtml_en/1847-12.html

Looking at all the catholic news recently, there was one a few months ago that perhaps should have received some more attention. A very high level meeting occurred in April between the Vatican and a delegation from Iran. The outcome of the meeting was a joint communiqué issued in which there were a number of items that the participants agreed on. And they committed to keep meeting, with the next meeting scheduled in Tehran within two years. The full communiqué is available here.

Here are the first three items they agreed on:

1. Faith and reason are both gifts of God to mankind.

2. Faith and reason do not contradict each other, but faith might in some cases be above reason, but never against it.

3. Faith and reason are intrinsically non-violent. Neither reason nor faith should be used for violence; unfortunately, both of them have been sometimes misused to perpetrate violence. In…

Bishop Salvatore Matano of Burlington, Vermont. Credit: cardinalseansblog.org

In a town as Catholic as St. Louis, it’s only natural that in the transition time between archbishops the speculation about whom the pope might assign as the city’s next Catholic leader runs rampant.

The truth is, no one knows who will succeed Archbishop Raymond Burke, and anyone who has any information about the specifics of the search is bound by a vow of silence - called a papal secret. A papal secret is a secret - if you’re a priest or bishop - you likely don’t want to let out of the bag.

Those who keep a close eye on this kind of thing rarely stick out their necks to offer actual candidates’ names to inquiring reporters, or, when they do name names, they take pains to ensure their own remains off the record.

What is always unclear is where prospective candidates’ names surface to begin with,…

Pope Benedict XVI speaks to the faithful from his summer residence in Castelgandolfo last month. (TIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images)

The Wall Street Journal had a good story on today’s front page about L’Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican.

Seems the 147-year-old newspaper - at the behest of Pope Benedict XVI - is expanding the scope of its report to include news from outside the walls of Vatican City - “hard-hitting news, international stories and more articles by women,” according to the story.

As the paper’s new editor-in-chief, Giovanni Maria Vian, told the Journal:

There was a really precise request from the paper’s publisher…In this case, the publisher just happened to be the pope.

In comments published over the weekend in a daily Catholic newspaper sponsored by the Italian bishops’ conference, former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke said the Democratic Party “risks transforming itself definitively into a ‘party of death.’”

According to a Catholic New Service story, Burke - now the head of the Vatican’s version of the supreme court - was told that musician Sheryl Crow played at the Democratic National Convention last month.

“That does not surprise me much,” the archbishop said. “At this point the Democratic Party risks transforming itself definitely into a ‘party of death’ because of its choices on bioethical questions as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in his book, ‘The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life.’”

Archbishop Burke said the Democratic Party once was “the party that helped our immigrant parents and grandparents better integrate and prosper in American society. But it is not the same anymore.”

Pro-life Democrats are…

The theme of healing and reconciliation in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Belleville will continue next week when a long-awaited mediation between Bishop Edward Braxton and his priests begins Monday.In the three years since Braxton arrived in 2005, some Belleville priests have been agitating for the Vatican to transfer him out of the diocese. In March, about 60 percent of the diocese’s resident priests signed a letter asking Braxton to resign. The bishop responded by accusing some of the priests of blackmailing him before his installation.

Last month, the diocese brought in a Catholic-oriented consulting and mediation firm based outside Seattle to help repair the battered relationship with a series of meetings.

Braxton has said the cost of hiring the mediation company, the Reid Group, would be partially covered by the diocese’s Convocation funds and Continuing Education of Priests funds, and “will not exceed $30,000.”

Next week’s four-day convocation of Belleville’s priests at a St.…