The pope has reassigned St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke to Rome to be the top administrator of one of the Catholic Churches three courts, its court of last appeal, according to an announcement by the Vatican press office.

He is the first American to hold the post, though Americans have served on the court. Burke has been on the tribunal for two years, commuting to Rome from St. Louis.

The new job means that the next time the pope gives out red hats, Burke likely will become a cardinal, an official adviser to the pope.

Raymond Burke

Came to St. Louis in 2004, will become prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Aposotolic Signatura.

Pope Benedict XVI named Burke, a passionate canon lawyer by education, as prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

The post is an important Vatican desk job, although the leader is not much in the public eye -- barring a rare hullabaloo over a case. Until 2002, this tribunal mostly handled appeals of marriage annulments.

Until Pope Benedict XVI names a new archbishop for St. Louis, Bishop Robert J. Hermann, a Weingarten, Mo., native will serve as administrator. Bishop Hermann is now the highest authority in the St. Louis Archdiocese. From the moment the announcement was made a noon Rome time today, Burke ceased to have authority in St. Louis. However, he expects to take until August to move out of his Lindell Boulevard residence and clear his desk.

Hermann was selected Friday by the archdiocese's college of consulators, a group of about 12 parish priests. Such a temporary appointment was made when Archbishop John L. May was ill and after Rigali left St. Louis for Philadelphia. No administrator can make permanent assignments during his tenure.

The much revered Hermann would not be considered for the permanent post of archbishop since he turns 74 in August. Bishops must offer the pope their resignations when they reach 75.  

As a member of the Congregation for Bishops, Rigali will influence who is the next St. Louis Archbishop. No one would be more popular than native son, Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan, but Benedict likely has the leadership of larger dioceses planned for him.

For the first time in the history of the St. Louis archdiocese, its archbishop has been assigned to a job in the Vatican leadership, its curia in Rome, removing him from pastoral work with the laity. Burke was installed as the St. Louis archbishop in January 2004, coming here from his home diocese of LaCrosse, Wisc. There he had studied as a seminarian, been ordained a priest and after more studies to become a canon lawyer in Rome became its bishop. He was named to St. Louis after its former archbishop Justin F. Rigali, now a cardinal, was transferred to Philadelphia.

Burke is warmly regarded by seminarians, by cloistered nuns and some St. Louis priests; he is wildly popular nationally with traditional Catholics grateful that he has promoted the Mass in Latin. However, he has not been popular with some priests and nuns here.

"Oh, my gosh, that is marvelous news," said one parish priest on hearing the news Friday morning. He declined to allow his name to be used. "The priest morale here has been so low."

Though warm and charming one-on-one with the laity and on pilgrimages he led, his official communications and actions with church members have often left them stunned because his efforts to help them understand his actions failed.

Catholics who understand the letter of the church law easily comprehend many of his actions, including the excommunication of the priest and board of St. Stanislaus Church in St. Louis -- although that, and his continued fund-raising efforts for a $25 million shrine to Mary in his former diocese in Wisconsin, upset many St. Louisans. His most visible success was at the seminary where he recruited and nourished vocations to the priesthood. He set aside much time for individual sessions with young men preparing for ordination. They talk about seeing his informal, joyful side.

"Something St. Louisans can look at with great pleasure is that Archbishop Burke, in the short time he has been here, has encouraged seminarians," said Helen Hitchcock, founder and director of Women for Faith and Family and a member of St. Roch Parish.  "It has drawn men to the priesthood."

Burke ordained nine men to the priesthood last month, some of whom were from outside the St. Louis archdiocese and moved here as seminarians because of him. Other young men he had mentored are in the pipeline to become priests.

She looks at the national picture with fewer ordinations than that in even much larger dioceses and finds much hope for St. Louis, she said.

Burke has been the most outspoken American bishop on not giving Holy Communion to public figures and politicians who support abortion rights and public financing of embryonic stem cell research. In January 2004, shortly before the Missouri presidential primary, within a week of becoming St. Louis' archbishop, he told this reporter on KMOV-TV that he would refuse Holy Communion to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic, because Kerry did not uphold the church's position on abortion. Last year, he said the same thing about then-Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

"The appointment is going to make every pro-choice Catholic politician very worried,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, author of  “Inside the Vatican” and a Jesuit priest. “After all, he made his name as a canon lawyer denying communion to pro-choice politicians."  

Now that Burke has been promoted to Rome, it  will make some American bishops “much more sympathetic”  to Burke’s efforts, Reese said. "Burke now will become a  voice in Rome for cracking down on pro-choice Catholics." 

“The appointment shows Pope Benedict has reached deep into the American church to find people to help run the Vatican," Reese said. 

It is not a joyful post, but it is in Rome, a place where Burke enjoys living. He speaks excellent Italian and studied to be a canon lawyer there as a young priest. Beginning in 1989, he worked in another of the Vatican's three courts, the Roman Rota. Pope John Paul II named him Defender of the Bond, the lawyer who must defend the validity of the marriage in annulment cases. He left that post only when John Paul named him LaCrosse's bishop in 1994.

The assignment also returns him to a mostly clerical world where he will have scant interaction with lay people except when he says public Masses.

Rumors of Burke's appointment to Rome have been circulating in the Vatican and among some U.S. bishops since earlier this spring when Benedict XVI named Burke to two time-consuming Vatican desk jobs: the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, which interprets canon or church law, and the Congregation for the Clergy, which oversees and regulates the training of priests and deacons in diocese. The latter is an area in which Burke has shown much success and energy during his St. Louis tenure. The Council for Legislative Texts is one of 11 Curia pontifical councils. Burke is said to enjoy pouring over texts and has been a leader in reviving the Latin Mass, founding two Latin oratories: churches where Mass in Latin is said that are not regular parishes.