Dress Code: Cost Of Catholic Elites' Clothes

Cardinal Raymond Burke

Pope Francis urged Catholic church officials to lead a more modest lifestyle. Trying to live up to Jesus' message about solidarity with the poor, the Pope has called for a church geared to social justice.

Addressing newly-named bishops in Rome on Sept. 19, he said pastors must not be "men with a princely mindset."

However, Cardinal Raymond Burke, the chief judge of the Vatican's supreme court, doesn't seem to be too willing to follow this advice.

Cardinal Burke, an American, can usually be seen in lavish procession with a train of watered silk, wearing fine scarlet gloves and jeweled red hats, suggesting nobility.

Francis seemed to have ornamental practices in mind when he said i

n a recent interview, "Heads of the church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers."

Such remarks, and the Pope's widely quoted comment about a gay priest, "Who am I to judge?" in a July press conference have sent shock waves to traditionalist Catholics, who see the rituals of ecclesiastical splendor as signs of a church in keeping with its past.

To the church's conservative wing, Francis's recent interview with the Jesuit-edited Vatican journal, La Civilta Cattolica, in which he endorsed greater internal tolerance and less obsession with abortion and birth control, suggest a retreat for doctrinal unity.

Although he has made no move to change Catholic moral teaching, Francis is addressing a church as divided as Western electorates on politics-of-the body, save for birth control, which 90 percent of Catholics support.

He went further, in the interview with La Repubblica in Rome, saying: "The court is the leprosy of the papacy."

The former archbishop of St. Louis, Cardinal Burke as a canon lawyer found favor with John Paul and Benedict. As Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, he oversees the Vatican's highest appellate court. Like many figures in the curia, or Vatican administration, Burke occupies interim status until Francis decides on all the prefects he will re-appoint or move out.

Burke's persona of ecclesiastical privilege, cultivated in the pomp of traditionalist ceremonies, forms a rococo contrast with the self-restrained style of Pope Francis. As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he took a bus to work and made frequent visits to the slums of Buenos Aires.

"The vestments, everything, are part of a tradition," Burke said in an interview last year. "We need to understand that and not just discard it and say, well, it was all just an ugly accretion."

Whether the pope will replace Burke as prefect of the Signatura is one of many questions buzzing in the Vatican, as Francis methodically goes about putting his own appointments in place, in keeping with the changes common to any new papacy.