The Papal Reset Continues

By embracing the cardinal Francis sidelined, Pope Leo XIV signals a new style of leadership — one that rewrites the politics of loyalty in Rome.

On the morning of the 22nd August, the Feast of the Queenship of Mary, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke walked once again into the Apostolic Palace and was received by Pope Leo XIV. That one line, dryly noted in the Vatican’s daily bulletin, is enough to signal a sea-change in Rome. For a decade Burke has been the symbol of resistance to certain trajectories under Pope Francis: Burke the sidelined canonist, one of the authors of dubia Francis never even deigned to answer, the man stripped of his apartment and stipend in what seemed like a personal rebuke, the Cardinal Pope Francis openly laughed about contracting COVID. Today, the same man was welcomed by the new Pope in what would be difficult to construe as anything other than an act of deliberate reconciliation.