Comments by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Cardinal Prevost wrote a letter congratulating Cardinal Burke for his 50th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood, which he celebrated at Rome, last month. The letter was written in Latin.

Here is my English translation, for those who cannot read Latin:

To Our Venerable Brother Cardinal priest of the Holy Roman Church, of Saint Agatha in the City, Raymond Leo Burke, celebrating a golden jubilee of priestly ordination at Rome received as a priest of the Diocese of La Crosse, We rejoice for your lifetime studiously exercised and proven solicitude, which occupied itself most of all with the things of the law and in use of the Dicasteries of the Apostolic See, which diligently devoutly serving, the universal Church according to the Heart of Christ, preached the precepts of the Gospel and told of its treasures. To whom while wishing you all the best, We freely impart the Apostolic Blessing, with the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul as witnesses, to him and to his nearest ones.

From the halls of the Vatican, on the 17th of June, in the Holy Year of 2025
Leo PP. XIV.

So, for those who love Latin, I will take a look at this letter and make some comments. Let’s see what we find. I will ignore the fact that Prevost is not the pope and was illegally elected. My interest here is only to understand better how learned Prevost is in the usage of Latin.

The first thing I see is that the Letter addresses the Cardinal using the English form of his surname, Burke. Burke is a modern word, which means, “to suppress, quietly or indirectly” (Source) This is not too auspicious of a surname, since it implies that you are a cover-up artist.

But Burke the surname is from the House of Burgh, which is from the Gaelic, de Burca, which means, “of the fortress“. So, this is the first error in the Letter, it should read, “Burcae” rather than “Burke”.

So much for the erudition of Prevost. It took me 5 minutes to discover this. I guess his secretary knows nothing about etymologies.

Second, I hold that after “ordinationis” (ordination) there should be a “tuae” (your), because the Cardinal is not celebrating a golden jubilee of just anyone’s ordination, but his own.

Third, “receptae” (received) is in the wrong position, since it modifies “ordinationis” and should be placed before “uti”, and “Romae” (at Rome) could be omitted, since it is superfluous to mention where the Cardinal celebrated his 50th anniversary of priestly ordination, and it might confuse some readers adjacent to “receptae”. — The problem here is a cross over of a double nested pair of “golden jubilee” (aureum … jubileaum) embracing “priestly ordination” (ordinationis presbyteralis) while “priestly ordination” and “received” attempt to encompass “as a priest in the Diocese of Lacross” (uti .. Crossae). That’s sloppy, in a short letter, unless Prevost is aspiring to the syntax of Virgil’s poetry, which the latter adopted for the sake of conserving the meter of the poem, in his own prose, which is pretentious if not inappropriate.

Fourth, this entire phrase depends on the erroneous use of “celebrating” (celebranti) which should either precede the phrase or end it, if used as an adjective or verbal noun, respectively; but which, nevertheless, should not be used at all, since the Letter is neither written (June 17, 2025) or received at the moment the Cardinal is celebrating his jubilee (June 29, 2025). This is the error of a first year Latin student who speaks American English and does not understand how tenses of verbs are used in Latin. — The entire phrase “celebrating a golden jubilee of priestly ordination at Rome received as a priest of the Diocese of Lacross” (aureum ordinationis presbyteralis jubilaeum Romae uti sacerdoti Diocesis Crossae receptae) should be reworked, with an ablative absolute, to read something like, “as the anniversary of your golden jubilee of ordination as a priest of the Diocese of La Crosse, (is) being celebrated here in the city (of Rome)” (anniversario aurei jubilaei ordinationis tuae sacerdote Diocesis Crossae in urbe celebratu). — Since, at Rome, the Latin usage is to say, “in urbe” that is, in the City, which has to be said, because Prevost at the close of the Letter says he wrote it “in the halls of the Vatican”. It is quite improper to say, “at Rome”, unless the author of the Letter is far, far away.

Fifth, the “uti” has been added by someone who does not know that the apposition of nouns such as “priest” (sacerdoti) is how Latin expresses “as a priest”, no matter what case it be in. Thus “uti”need not be used, since to a Latin speaker it is superfluous.

Sixth, Prevost uses “gratulamur” (We rejoice) with the accusative “nativitatem studiose exercitam” (lifetime studiously exercised), which is a rare usage of the accusative with that verb, found in Cicero, speaking of Brutus who had just assassinated Caesar — an indubitably inauspicious form to use, unless you are thanking a co-conspirator in some nefarious malfeasance.

Seventh, “nativitatem” is a very rare metaphorical use for “a life time” or “generation”. A bizarre usage, unless you are referring to some rebirth into some profession or secret society. It would be more accurate to say, “decursum” with “annorum” (“down through the years”), in my opinion.

Eighth, the letter speaks of the service of Cardinal Burke in the “Dicasteries” (using the capital, “D”) of the Roman Curia, but they were not called that before Bergoglio illegally changed their names in March of 2022, so the reference is anachronistic, because Burke has not served in the Roman Curia since 2014. If Prevost intended to use dicasteries in the general sense, the word should not have been capitalized in Latin, since in Latin only proper names are capitalized in modern standard ecclesiastical usage.

Ninth, this letter is addressed personally to Cardinal Burke in the second person, thus it is erroneous to say “ei et eiusque propinquis”, in the final blessing, speaking of the Cardinal in the third person: it should rather read, “tibi et tuique propinquis”. — This error seems to come from the modern habit of Italian and Spanish to use the third person singular for the second person address, a usage entirely foreign to Classical Latin.

Finally, if Prevost was an honest man, he would have promoted Burke before writing such a letter to such a persecuted man. To omit this, and send such a letter, is really a form of trolling.

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