VATICAN CITY
Huffington Post
By Mary Papenfuss
An arch-conservative American cardinal has denied that his sudden posting to Guam in the wake of a Vatican fake news attack on Pope Francis is a punishment from the liberal pontiff.
The Vatican dispatched Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke to Guam to be the judge at a trial there of an archbishop who was removed from office last year after several allegations of child sex abuse. Burke insisted the trial will likely be finished by the summer and told Mediaset in Italy that the posting was normal and not a punishment from the pope, though the two men have clashed in the past.
Burke was named in a recent New York Times article as a friend of Donald Trump’s top aide Steve Bannon. They’re both members of an emboldened Catholic power base — self-described “rad trads,” or radical traditionalists — pushing for a stricter interpretation of Church teachings, according to the Times. The pope, on the other hand, is one of the more liberal pontiffs of the last several decades. He preaches compassion, has encouraged protesting to achieve justice, is concerned about climate change and has attacked policies of the Trump administration without mentioning the president’s name.
Burke recently angered the pope after reportedly demanding the suspension of a leader of a traditionally conservative Catholic charity organization, the Knights of Malta, for arranging the distribution of free condoms in Myanmar. Francis also was recently the target of a fake publication designed by conservatives to look like the official Vatican newspaper. A phony interview in the paper mocked his liberal views.
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