Catholic World Report’s recent interview with Archbishop Raymond Burke has been posted here at the Ignatius.com website.
Archbishop Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis, was appointed in June as the prefect of the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. In the interview he discusses his new appointment as well as his tenure in St. Louis, touching on the hot-button issue of reception of Communion by pro-abortion politicians.
The interview concludes with some reflections by Archbishop Burke about the late Father John Hardon, whose cause for canonization was initiated by the archbishop.
“In the years that I knew him, the servant of God was very sick with cancer,” said Archbishop Burke. “But in those years, I like to say, he was always the quintessential Jesuit—he just would not give up the apostolate. The last meeting I had with him was late December in 2000 and he died on December 30 of 2000. His last words to me were, ‘Bishop, will you continue to work with me?’… I saw that and how he devoted himself to caring for the people most in need in the Church, especially people who had, in some way, been alienated by something that happened to them in the Church.”
— Tom McFeely