The Burke Effect?

Marco Tosatti of Vatican Insider argues that Cardinal Raymond Burke is the “great puppeteer” of American appointees: “The nomination of Charles Chaput, Native American bishop from Denver, to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia confirms Raymond Leo Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, as Benedict XVI’s top advisor in the United States.”

“[S]omeone (or Someone with a capital “S”) in the Vatican holds the frankness and clarity of vision of the head of the Vatican Supreme Court, in high esteem. Someone knows – and benefits from – his deep knowledge of people and things overseas, and his ability to identify solutions in terms of candidates for dioceses that are gradually freeing themselves, in a Church still shaken by the financial and public relations aftershocks, of the paedophilia scandal,” Tosatti writes.