The Overseer of Justice/ Archbishop Raymond Burke Speaks

By Andrew Rabel, reporting from Rome for Inside the vatican Magazine

Editor's note: Archbishop Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, recently invited Andrew Rabel, Australian ITV correspondent, to a friendly lunch nearby his offices at the Palazzo della Cancelleria (photo). Never to be outdone, Andrew always carries his dictaphone with him. So the former archbishop of St Louis, with his typical graciousness, consented to an interview, despite the noise in the crowded restaurant. It is the second interview ITV has conducted with His Excellency in less than a year.


We are posting this is a small portion of the entire interview where he is asked about Our Lady of America and his role in its confirmation.


Some devotees of Our Lady of America, are rather critical of the letter you wrote when you were Archbishop of St. Louis, claiming that the devotion had now been approved. They say that because Sister Mary Ephrem Neuzil (the seer who initiated and encouraged this devotion until her death in the year 2000) came from Ohio, it was not within your authority to write the letter?

Burke: I was simply asked to give a canonical opinion as to whether the devotion had ever been properly recognized. It was perfectly proper to ask me to write the letter because I have a certain knowledge of canon law and was provided all of the necessary documentation to reach a conclusion about the question of the approval of the devotion. After studying the documentation, I was able to write the letter. The letter was sent to my brother Bishops in the United States; it was not written to a wide audience. Before sending the letter, I sent a draft of it to the Archbishop of Cincinnati and the Bishop of Toledo, in whose jurisdiction Sister Mary Ephrem lived a good part of her religious life.
So what the letter simply says is that, yes, Archbishop Paul Leibold [a previous archbishop of Cincinnati] knew of this devotion from its beginning, when he was a priest, and eventually approved it.
I am sad there are these divisions in regard to the devotion, because I think it is a very beautiful devotion and especially fitting for our time. Our Lady’s message on the living of the Holy Trinity within us, and its manifestation in the purity of the young is so much needed in our culture, today.
I was not in a position to approve anything. You can criticize me for many things, but what I did in writing the letter was correct.

Well because of the position you have now in Rome, can you expedite Mary’s request to have the statue of Our Lady of America enshrined at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC?

Burke: No, there is nothing I can do here. That decision entirely rests with the competent bishops in the United States.