A top conservative Catholic cardinal who spoke out about his COVID-19 vaccine skepticism is out of the hospital after contracting the disease in August, the Associated Press reported.
Cardinal Raymond Burke, 73, posted a letter on his website Saturday announcing that he had left an undisclosed hospital on September 3. He said he was in a house near his family but did not say where it was located.
Burke said in the letter he was undergoing rehabilitation at the house because he still experiences fatigue and difficulty breathing after being sick with COVID-19, the AP said. The cardinal did not provide details on the type of rehabilitation but said that he was steadily making progress and that a secretary from Rome had moved into the house to help as he recovers.
“I cannot predict when I will be able to return to my normal activities,” Burke wrote in the letter. “Seemingly, it will be several more weeks.”
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
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He said God saved him for “some work” he wants him to carry out with the help of the church and asked people to pray for him, the world and the church, all of which are “beset with so much confusion and error to the great and even mortal harm of many souls.” He didn’t elaborate.
Burke tweeted on August 10 that he had contracted the disease. His staff tweeted six days later that he had been sedated and was breathing through a ventilator. The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a shrine Burke founded in La Crosse, Wisconsin, released a statement on August 21 saying Burke had come off the ventilator. Burke tweeted on August 30 that he had been moved out of intensive care into a room at an undisclosed hospital.
Pope Francis said earlier this month that he doesn’t understand why people refuse to take a COVID-19 vaccine, acknowledging that “even in the College of Cardinals, there are some negationists.” He called one of the cardinals a “poor guy” who had been hospitalized with the disease, an apparent reference to Burke, and added, “Well, the irony of life.”
The pope removed Burke from his position overseeing the Vatican’s supreme court after Burke in 2014 likened the church to a ship with no rudder. Two years later, Burke joined three other conservative cardinals in asking Francis to explain why he decided to let remarried Catholics receive Holy Communion.
Burke also has warned people that governments were using fear of the pandemic to manipulate people. He spoke out against mandatory vaccinations in 2020, saying some in society want to implant microchips in people.
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