(LifeSiteNews) — A former LGBT activist, who once protested Cardinal Raymond Burke, converted due to the Latin Mass, the prelate shared during a recent conference.
Burke shared the story during the recent Call to Holiness Conference. The conference occurred at the end of October, but videos were just posted, including an hour-long Q&A with Burke and Father Chad Ripperger.
The story came in response to a question about why young people are interested in the Latin Mass.
“I had a very moving experience in June this year,” Burke shared. He was in St. Louis at St. Francis de Sales Oratory for a retreat with the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP) canons. The church also hosted a public reception for him.
“A young man came to me… he asked me if I remembered Ash Wednesday in 2004,” Burke said. As the new archbishop of St. Louis at the time, he said he offered Mass at a Catholic high school. A group of students protested him by wearing rainbow armbands, the prelate shared. They were “angry” at him because he spoke out in favor of a Missouri referendum in support of biblical marriage.
Cdl. Burke shares how the Latin Mass helped convert a former LGBT activist.
Full video – https://t.co/Jj1jLHXzTj pic.twitter.com/WDCiz8k5sj
— Matt Lamb (@MattLamb22) November 20, 2023
“I’ve come here to tell you I’m sorry,” the young man told him.
“I was the leader of the… gay club and I went on to lead a very dissolute life,” he said.
“God brought me here [to the ICKSP oratory], and I came to the church, and I saw this very beautiful offering of the Holy Mass, and it’s led me to try to get my life straightened out,” he told Burke.
“This is a form of the Roman Rite that has developed from the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great, even before, and there’s a power that is in it that is simply great,” Burke said.
This is not the only time a former homosexual has come back to apologize to the conservative prelate. While bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, Burke received Catholic items from an openly gay man who renounced his faith. Several years later, the man returned to Catholicism, apologized to Burke, and asked if he remembered him dropping the items off at the office. Burke told him he did, and he had kept the box of items because he believed the man would eventually return to the faith.
Some crackdown on tradition but orthodoxy flourishes among the youth
Burke’s story adds to further proof that tradition, including the Latin Mass, is a source of growth for the Church. This comes despite Pope Francis trying to stop widespread use of the Latin Mass. Other bishops have also suppressed or discouraged traditional practices even in the Novus Ordo masses, including the priest facing ad orientem or the laity using kneelers to receive the Holy Eucharist.
However, the crackdown is possibly seen as a response to the growing interest in tradition among younger Catholics, both the laity and clergy.
New priests generally say they are “conservative” or “orthodox” while older, liberal priests are few and far between, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.