Cardinal who criticized vaccine now on ventilator after positive COVID-19 test

A cardinal who has criticized the COVID-19 vaccine is now on a ventilator after testing positive for the coronavirus, multiple news outlets reported.

Cardinal Raymond Burke’s team tweeted on Saturday that he “has been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 and is being assisted by a ventilator. Doctors are encouraged by his progress.”

Burke, who lives in Rome, tweeted a few days earlier that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19. He was on a trip to Wisconsin when he contracted the virus, The Washington Post reported.

Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. Thanks be to God, I am resting comfortably and receiving excellent medical care. Please pray for me as I begin my recovery. Let us trust in Divine Providence. God bless you.

— Cardinal Burke (@cardinalrlburke) August 10, 2021

Burke has been vocal about his skepticism of the vaccine, verging at times into misinformation by saying some people believe there should be a “microchip … placed under the skin of every person, so that at any moment he or she can be controlled by the state regarding health and about other matters which we can only imagine,” the Post reported.

The Vatican said in December that taking the COVID-19 vaccine is “morally acceptable,” even if the development of the vaccine involved the use of cell lines from aborted fetuses during the research phase.

Burke, 73, is known for expressing his conservative beliefs. In 2004, he refused to give communion to then-Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) because of Kerry’s support for abortion rights, and he criticized Notre Dame University for giving former President Obama an honorary degree, arguing that Catholics who voted for Obama were collaborating with evil, according to the Post.