Against Leo XIV: Cardinal Burke reasserts Our Lady as Co-Redemptrix

The address, given at the opening of the international congress The Mystery of Mary in Dogma and in the Magisterium at Rome’s Augustinianum came nearly a year after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (DDF) note Mater populi fidelis adopted the position that the title is inappropriate and months after Pope Leo XIV publicly praised the note.

The full text, Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Kingdom of Christ the King: the Mission of the Co-redemptrix and of the Co-redeemers, was published by La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana with the organizers’ permission.

Infovaticana reported that Burke made the defense at the opening of the congress and that the address enters the debate reopened by the November 2025 doctrinal note, which called the use of the ancient title as “always inappropriate” because it could obscure Christ’s unique saving mediation.

Burke did not name Leo XIV or the deeply scandal–plagued and heterodox DDF prefect Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández in his address, yet the contrast of his presentation is nonetheless direct.

Speaking to the DDF’s plenary on January 29, Leo claimed that Mater populi fidelis “encourages popular Marian devotion, deepening its biblical and theological foundations, while offering precise and important clarifications for Mariology,” and he said the dicastery’s recent work would be “of great benefit to the spiritual growth of the holy and faithful People of God,” in “the context of the epochal change we are experiencing.”

The pope also proposed the note “gives valuable guidance to bishops on the exercise of their pastoral action, as well as to theologians, in their service of study and evangelization.”

The note itself, dated November 4, 2025, and approved by Leo on October 7, 2025, alleged that the title “Co-Redemptrix” – which saints and pontiffs have used for centuries – has become “unhelpful” because it can require many explanations to understand and thus risks “eclipsing the exclusive role of Jesus Christ.”

Blessed Virgin Mary ‘participated in a wholly unique way’ in the ‘redemptive Incarnation’

Cardinal Burke, in contrast, clarified the long-established traditional doctrine that Christ’s sole mediation does not exclude a real, subordinate cooperation.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son incarnate, is the sole Redeemer,” he affirmed, “but God the Father, in sending His only begotten Son in human flesh to redeem the world, willed the cooperation of man in the redemptive work, beginning with the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

Burke, who was named a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010, then affirmed the doctrinal truth of the term that the DDF note seeks to set aside. “The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, has participated in a wholly unique way in the Mystery of faith, in the Mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, and is rightly called Co-redemptrix.”

The same logic, Burke added, extends in a lesser way to the baptized “insofar as we unite our hearts, together with her Immaculate Heart, to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, we participate in the saving mission of Christ. And we can rightly be called co-redeemers.”