Salvini meets Cardinal Burke, staunch critic of Pope Francis

Matteo Salvini, the far-right Italian interior minister who once questioned Pope Francis’s legitimacy, has met Raymond Burke, the Argentinian pontiff’s fiercest critic in the Vatican, signalling an unprecedented gulf between the leader of the Catholic church and a key figure in the new populist government.

Salvini, the leader of the League party, has long been at odds with Francis over the issue of migration, the pope’s outreach to Muslims and his calls for Europe to integrate migrant communities.

The rift seemed to take a turn for the worse late last week, when a photograph emerged of an amicable meeting between Salvini and Burke, a staunch conservative.

It was not their first encounter. The pair have met on two other occasions, according to a Vatican watcher who is close to Burke. The US cardinal, one of four to sign an openly critical letter to Francis last year questioning guidance that allows priests to determine whether remarried Catholics could receive communion, has praised Donald Trump and adopted a far more critical stance on migrants than the pope.

The meeting was unusual because the new Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, has not yet had a formal meeting with Francis. Salvini’s controversial decisions on migration have created the impression that he is setting Italy’s agenda.

Burke is seen as the ringleader of a faction of the Catholic church opposed to Francis. Like Salvini, he counts the far-right populist Steve Bannon, who is Catholic and formerly served as a White House strategist for Trump, as a confidante.

Salvini was criticised before the 4 March election when he brandished a rosary during an election event and swore to remain faithful to Italians. Salvini is Catholic and reportedly attends mass but he is divorced and lives with a partner.

Any possible alliance between Salvini and Burke, a reactionary who has blamed “radical feminism” for marginalising men and was once demoted by Francis, is noteworthy given how critical Salvini has been about the pope. When a Catholic newspaper criticised Salvini in 2016, he responded by saying: “My pope is Benedict.”

That was a reference to Francis’s conservative predecessor who resigned in 2013, an act not witnessed in the Catholic church for centuries. Francis has since been a tough critic of capitalism and the exploitation of the developing world, and has suggested it is a Christian duty to treat migrants with dignity and respect.

He has, however, steered clear of becoming involved in Italian politics, preferring instead to focus on the “global church” and seeking to decentralise power away from Rome. He appeared to have a good relationship with Matteo Renzi, the former centre-left prime minister, but did not get involved in his campaign to make civil unions legal in Italy.

The pope did, however, speak at length last week about the importance of treating migrants with respect. The fact that he made his comments as Salvini turned away the Aquarius rescue ship with 630 migrants on board and said all non-Italian ships would be barred from entering Italian ports, may not have been a coincidence.

“I would like to point out that the issue of migration is not simply one of numbers, but of persons, each with his or her own history, culture, feelings and aspirations,” Francis said. “These persons, our brothers and sisters, need ongoing protection, independently of whatever migrant status they may have,.”

His comments may not, however, carry much influence. “The church does not have the political influence it used to have,” said Giovanni Orsina, a political historian at Luiss University in Rome. “The Italian public opinion is with Salvini, and they don’t care what the church says.”