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Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke

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WASHINGTON D.C. (LifeSiteNews)  – Cardinal Raymond Burke has been placed on a ventilator after contracting COVID-19. The cardinal’s condition is rapidly deteriorating as he has developed severe pneumonia and is not responding to treatment. Calls to prayer have been issued.

Cardinal Burke was admitted to the hospital after he tested positive for COVID-19 last week. In a tweet he posted on his twitter account, the 73-year-old cardinal asked the faithful to pray for him and invited them to trust in Divine Providence:

“Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. Thanks be to God, I am resting comfortably and receiving excellent medical care. Please pray for me as I begin my recovery. Let us trust in Divine Providence. God bless you.”

An update on his condition was posted on his twitter account last Saturday on the Vigil of the Assumption.

 


The tweet read:

“Cardinal Burke has been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 and is being assisted by a ventilator. Doctors are encouraged by his progress. H.E. faithfully prayed the Rosary for those suffering from the virus. On this Vigil of the Assumption, let us now pray the Rosary for him.”

Since then, LifeSiteNews has received regular updates from trusted sources including members of the Burke family. The cardinal’s condition is deteriorating rapidly and is now very serious. A number of Catholic organizations such as Catholic Action have issued prayer calls for him and Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan tweeted this morning:

“According to information I received, Cardinal Burke’s state of health is very serious. We pray insistently for the healing of Cardinal Burke.”

Earlier today Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò wrote to LifeSiteNews urging Catholics to pray for Cardinal Burke.

“In these hours of great concern for the health of our dear Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, I invite all of the faithful to pray for him, entrusting His Eminence to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” Viganò wrote.

“I also exhort the doctors who are caring for His Eminence to not hesitate to seriously consider using the existing treatments whose effectiveness have been demonstrated.”

Mainstream media organizations are using the Cardinal’s poor health to attack him, focusing on his “vaccine skepticism” which they implicitly quote as the cause for his current demise.

The Washington Post even dared to call Burke’s condemnation of the use of  fetus-derived cell lines for vaccine development “misleading” in an article they published yesterday, while admitting in the same paragraph that “both Pfizer and Moderna used cell lines derived from fetal tissue taken from elective abortions in the 1970s and 1980s to test whether the vaccines worked.”

Some liberal Catholic media sources like the Jesuit America magazine have also reported on Burke’s current condition only in an attempt to discredit his views.

In fact, Burke’s statements on the COVID-19 only reflect the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church regarding the use of cell lines for the production of vaccines at any given stage.

In a powerful address during the virtual Rome Life Forum in May of last year, Cardinal Burke stated that “it is never morally justified to develop a vaccine through the use of cell lines of aborted fetuses” and also noted that “vaccination itself cannot be imposed in a totalitarian manner on citizens.”

The prince of the Church also frequently spoke out against some of the global elite’s evil agendas. In a sermon he gave on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, on December 12, in 2020, he vehemently condemned the worldwide spread of Marxist materialism and the use of the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to usher in the so-called “Great Reset” which he characterized as a plan by “certain forces, inimical to families and to the freedom of nations to advance their evil agenda.”

The term “Great Reset” used by Burke here is not a word coined by conspiracy theorists, but an expression used by world economic leaders themselves. The “Great Reset” is a plan designed by globalist elites, who gather at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland once a year. The WEF seeks to ‘push the reset button’ on the global economy.”

“The COVID-19 crisis has shown us that our old systems are not fit anymore for the 21st century,”  claimed Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum and a prominent  proponent  of the Great Reset.

“It has laid bare the fundamental lack of social cohesion, fairness, inclusion, and equality,” he continued.

Now is the historical moment, the time, not only to fight the virus but to shape the system … for the post COVID era… In short, we need a great reset.”

Cardinal Burke has also come under fire from many liberal Catholics in the past for his open and frequent criticism of some of Pope Francis’ most drastic moves against traditional teachings and practices of the Church. In 2016 the cardinal was one of four cardinals who issued a letter of concerns, or “Dubia,” to Pope Francis following the promulgation of the pontiff’s encyclical Amoris Laetitia. Amoris Laetitia seemed to allow communion for adulterous couples, which raised many questions concerning Christ’s doctrine on marriage and the concept of mortal sin.

More recently, he has criticised Pope Francis new motu proprio Traditionis Custodes which effectively reverses Pope Benedict’s 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum by imposing drastic limitations on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) according to the 1962 Roman Missal.  Pope Benedict had referred to the TLM as the “extraordinary form” of the Roman Rite.

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.