John Dolan: Cardinal with Cork roots tipped to be the next Pope

In 1910, Hannah O’Keeffe bade farewell to her family in the North Cork village of Cullen, and headed away for a new life in America.

The young woman sailed from Queenstown (now Cobh) and settled in the midwestern U.S. state of Wisconsin.

Here, Hannah met John Burke, a man with Tipperary roots, and they raised a family.

Hannah was a devout Catholic, and I wonder what she would have said if you had told her that, one day far in the future, her grandson would be a contender to be Pope.

Begosh, indeed.

Hannah and John had a son, Thomas, and he and his wife Marie had six children - the youngest, Raymond Leo Burke, is now a high-ranking Cardinal of the Church, and has been tipped by many as a potential successor to Pope Francis, whose death was announced on Easter Monday. 

So, how likely is it that 76-year-old American Cardinal Burke, the grandson of a Cork woman, will become the 267th pontiff when the white smoke is one day released from the Vatican chimney and the successor to Francis is revealed?

Likely enough to recently have him sixth in the betting among bookmakers.,

Likely enough that a New York Times podcast earlier this year named Cardinal Burke among its eight top contenders to replace the ailing Pope.

Eminently qualified, he is a canon lawyer and intimately familiar with the current pontiff and with the workings of the Vatican, as Cardinal Priest of Sant’Agata de’ Goti in Rome, as well as being a former Archbishop of St Louis in Missouri.

He is prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, which ensures justice in the Church is correctly istered.

If Cardinal Burke does get the top job at the Vatican, we can expect a visit to Cork to be high on his papal itinerary - he is intensely proud of his Rebel roots, and has been a regular visitor over the years.

In 2010, he visited the village of Cullen, the place his granny had left exactly a century earlier, which lies a few miles east of the Kerry border, and is home to a holy well named after a female saint, Latiaran.

Burke celebrated mass in the village’s parish church along with nine other of the clergy, and declared in his homily: “I thank God for the gift of my life and faith, which is so connected to this place.

“I always think of Ireland with gratitude, because my grandparents brought the Catholic faith to the USA, and they and my parents nurtured it in a very steadfast way in the home and the wider community.

“The older I became, the more grateful I became for the way the faith was handed down from grandparents and parents to the next generation.”

While in Cullen that year, Burke also met relatives from the Duhallow area - he has cousins in Millstreet, Rathmore, and Cullen itself.

The Cardinal has since returned to Cork for the International Liturgy Conference here, and in 2011, he said Mass in SS Peter and Paul’s Church in the city, and also met then Lord Mayor Terry Shannon.

So, what are the chances of Cork staking a claim to the next pontiff?

Francis was viewed both inside and outside Rome as a reformer and a liberal, and the two men best placed to continue this direction would be Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines - a first Asian Pope - and Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson - a first black pontiff in 1,500 years.

If the Vatican leans towards a more moderate choice, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s highest-ranking diplomat, could become the first Italian Pope since John Paul I almost half a century ago.

Our man Cardinal Burke is very much seen as an arch conservative who would seek to double down on some of the Church’s more controversial stances, and undo some of Francis’s reforming work.

He has publicly clashed with the Pope’s more liberal philosophies, particularly regarding his willingness to allow divorced and remarried couples to receive the Eucharist.

Burke has also called the Church’s new language around contraception, civil marriages and gay people “objectionable”, and has railed against mooted discussions about allowing married men to become priests.

He previously said that Catholic politicians who legalised abortion, such as Joe Biden, should not receive the Eucharist.

In 2013, the Cardinal criticised then Taoiseach Enda Kenny when he described himself as a taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not a Catholic taoiseach. It “does not make any sense”, Burke observed.

There is little doubt where he would have stood on the recent Irish liberalising referenda in the homeland of his grandmother.

Indeed, Burke is such a staunch conservative that he remains an ardent fan of the Latin Mass, and sang a hymn in Latin during his service in Cullen in 2010.

I can already see many Irish eyes raising to the heavens at the prospect of a man with Cork roots offering such opinions to the world from the throne of St Peter; on the other hand, you could argue he is merely in lockstep with views that have dominated the Catholic Church for centuries.

In recent years, Cardinal Burke has shown he is unafraid to confront what he sees as societal issues that hinder the work of his Church.

During the pandemic, he criticised the first lockdown, claiming it was not how God had “called us to live”. Nor was he a fan of social distancing, insisting clergy should be on hand to tend to their flock at that time of crisis.

Burke also opposed mandatory vaccination, and in 2021, had to be placed on a ventilator after testing positive for the covid virus.

He once said: “I was raised in an Irish Catholic family which had a keen sense of the moral law. I go back to Ireland regularly and there are many wonderful people in Ireland hungering for leadership.”

When the time comes to find a successor to Pope Francis, just 138 cardinals will be eligible to participate in the conclave. Will a proud grandson of Cork win the day?

Whoever becomes the next pope, bookmakers believe there is a strong chance he will choose the name Francis II.

If Cardinal Burke succeeds Francis as the first American pontiff, I doubt he would become the first ever Pope Raymond, but perhaps he would adopt his own middle name, and become Pope Leo XIIII.

This article previously appeared in The Echo and on Echolive.ie.