ROME — Pope Francis said he intends to evict conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke from his subsidized Vatican apartment and strip him of his monthly salary, calling the prelate “my enemy.”

Francis revealed his intentions at a closed meeting of the heads of Vatican offices on November 20 but the leaked news has since been confirmed by various independent sources present at the closed-door session.

According to Riccardo Cascioli of La Bussola Quotidiana, which broke the story, the alleged enmity of Cardinal Burke “has become a real obsession for Pope Francis in recent times,” even though the American cardinal has really been “in the crosshairs since the beginning of his pontificate.”

“Cardinal Burke is my enemy, so I am taking away his apartment and his paycheck,” the pope reportedly said, a financial loss calculated at between $112,000 and $152,000 per year.

In 2018, Burke criticized a secret deal between the Vatican and China’s Communist Party on the naming of bishops in China, calling it “absolutely unconscionable.”

The cardinal used stronger language still in 2021 in reaction to the pope’s decision to drastically restrict the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Those who are attached to the Traditional Latin Mass, sometimes called the Tridentine Mass, “are deeply disheartened by the severity of the discipline” imposed by Pope Francis and “offended by the language” he employs to describe them, their attitudes and their conduct, Burke said.

U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke attends the of funeral mass for late Cardinal William Joseph Levada on September 27, 2019 at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. (TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images)

Francis’ message to the “devout faithful who have a deep appreciation and attachment” to the Traditional Latin Mass is that “they suffer from an aberration which can be tolerated for a time but must ultimately be eradicated,” Burke said.

At the time, Burke lamented “the severe and revolutionary action of the Holy Father,” while noting “the greater and ever increasing number of faithful who desire to worship God” according to the old rite.

Burke, an eminent canon lawyer who formerly headed the Vatican’s highest court, is the second conservative American bishop to be punished by the pontiff this month. Francis also ousted Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, who had dared to openly criticize the pope.

Italy’s state-owned RAI News reported that an investigation into Bishop Strickland’s governance was launched as a response to “his traditional positions, irreconcilable with the new course started by Pope Francis.”

As examples, RAI noted that Bishop Strickland is “a vigorous defender of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal and dogmatic positions on marriage, human life, and religious freedom.”

Among Strickland’s critical positions, was opposition to the pope’s “innovations in matters of marriage, the Eucharist, and sexuality,” RAI reported.

The conservative Catholic site Silere non possum (I cannot be silent) asserted that Bishop Strickland’s ouster was “the price he paid for telling the truth,” and for his support of the traditional Latin Mass.

Strickland became the pope’s target “because of his clear and unblemished opposition to the ‘Synodal system,’” the article states, in reference to Francis’ efforts to overhaul Church structures in favor of consultative bodies, which critics claim are murky and easily manipulated.

While Francis has said he welcomes criticism and defends freedom of speech, this is patently untrue, the article asserts, since “those who live under this dictatorial system are very clear that ‘freedom of speech’ is something completely different.”

In a tweet Tuesday, Strickland reacted to reports that Francis had taken punitive action against Cardinal Burke.

“If this is accurate it is an atrocity that must be opposed. If it is false information it needs to be corrected immediately,” Strickland wrote.

Following Strickland’s ouster, the Canada-based Catholic news outlet LifeSiteNews underscored the pope’s selective punishment of conservative clerics, noting that he “has not disciplined numerous bishops who have publicly contradicted Catholic doctrine on homosexual activity, gender, same-sex ‘blessings,’ the ordination of women, and the reception of the Eucharist.”

In 2017, historian Henry Sire published a book called The Dictator Pope in which he portrayed Francis as an authoritarian leader who does not brook opposition or criticism.

Contrary to his public persona as a jovial man of the people, Sire wrote that Francis has turned out to be “a papal tyrant the like of whom has not been seen for many centuries” and under his administration, “the Vatican is systematically silencing, eliminating and replacing critics of the Pope’s views.”

“When the publicity cameras are off him, Pope Francis turns into a different figure: arrogant, dismissive of people, prodigal of bad language and notorious for furious outbursts of temper which are known to everyone from the cardinals to the chauffeurs,” Sire declared.