MADISON -- His friends in the Diocese of Madison were not surprised to hear that Pope Benedict XVI is elevating Archbishop Raymond L. Burke to the status of cardinal on November 20.Read the whole thing at Madison Catholic Herald
They knew he was destined for great things in the Church.
He stood out
Father Smith recalls that Cardinal-designate Burke stood out even as a freshman in high school in 1962. He said, “Seminarian Raymond Burke had the audacity to stand up before an entire house meeting and complain about the Riki Tiki Laundry — the student-run laundry at Holy Cross Seminary in La Crosse. Even then I should have known that he would never be afraid and never be deterred from speaking his mind about issues.”
Even as a grade school student, Cardinal-designate Burke knew that he wanted to be a priest. But Father Smith said he never aspired to the hierarchy.
“He once told me that his happiest days were when he was the associate pastor at the Cathedral Parish in La Crosse and teaching at Aquinas High School. And he also told me that anyone who wanted to be a bishop was stupid!”
Devotion to Mary
Monsignor Oehrlein is very impressed with the wide range of reading the cardinal-designate does, as well as his devotion to Mary, the mother of God.
When he was bishop of La Crosse, Bishop Burke drove Monsignor Oehrlein up to a peak in the La Crosse bluffs. “He said he would build a church dedicated to Mary.”
That was a foreshadowing of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which Bishop Burke built there.
Catholic education
Monsignor Oehrlein is also impressed by Cardinal-designate Burke’s great concern for Catholic education.
Archbishop Burke is proud of his own Catholic education. He was born in 1948 in Richland Center, Wis. After his father died, 11-year-old Raymond moved with his mother and five siblings to Stratford, Wis., a village of about 1,600 people located 11 miles northeast of Marshfield.
The Burkes became members of St. Joseph Parish in Stratford and the children attended St. Joseph School.
“It’s astonishing that of all the bishops around the world, someone, a student from St. Joe’s School and from the Diocese of La Crosse, is a designate to be a cardinal,” St. Joseph School’s current principal, Debbie Johnston, told the Catholic Times, newspaper of the Diocese of La Crosse.
“It is kind of heart-warming to think that he still refers to Stratford as his home base,” she said.
There have been signs on the Stratford city limits saying, “Home of Archbishop Raymond Burke.” Those signs will soon be changed to “Home of Cardinal Raymond Burke.”
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