More than 10,000 pilgrims walk to Chartres in 2017 and Cardinal Burke's Mass
More than 10,000 of the faithful joined the 2017 pilgrimage to Chartres: 244 groups of 50 pilgrims each. The three-day, 100-kilometre route ran south from Notre-Dame de Paris through the Place de la Porte d'Orléans, then south-west to Chartres. The journey's end was marked by a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Burke.
Cardinal Raymond Burke is a very interesting figure. Born in Wisconsin in 1948, he built a fine career both in the States and in Rome. He has sat on the Congregation for the Clergy and on the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, and he headed the highest court of the Roman judicial system, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.
Burke's chief characteristic is his uncompromising conservatism; he is often called one of the most influential conservatives among the clergy of the New World. The cardinal's pronouncements on bioethical questions are numerous: he was among the first opponents of stem-cell research and, as ever, speaks categorically against abortion, going so far as to propose denying the Eucharist to politicians who supported forces advocating abortion. In Burke's opinion, all Catholics who voted for candidates opposed to a ban on abortion must repent of mortal sin, and only then may they receive communion.
Burke is an archetypal conservative, so his attitude to the sex scandals surrounding the Church comes as no surprise. During his archiepiscopate in St. Louis he reacted rather calmly to reports of abuse by priests and, in his day, blocked the establishment of a fund for victims of sexual abuse.
That said, the Chartres pilgrimage holds many other interesting symbols and signals as well.
