VIDEO: Watch Cardinal Burke’s Full Keynote Address

What does it take to form young men of God in a hostile culture? In this powerful keynote address, His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke answers that question, encouraging families, educators, and students to rise to the challenges of our time.

Introduced by St. Louis de Montfort Academy faculty member Mr. Byron Whitcraft, the speech delivered on April 25, 2026, is one you won’t want to miss.

Transcript:

At this moment, I would like to introduce our keynote speaker, His Eminence, Raymond Cardinal Burke. His Eminence was born on June 30, 1948, in Richland Center, Wisconsin. He has been a priest of the Catholic Church for 50 years. 

(Wisconsinites applaud)

He's been a priest for fifty years and a bishop for thirty-one years. He has held many posts inside the Church, among those being Bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, from 1995 to 2004, and he was archbishop of my hometown, Saint Louis, Missouri, from 2004 to 2008.

From there, he was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI and appointed prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court in the church, a post he held until 2014. His Eminence has been a longtime defender of the Church's traditions. He has supported the traditional Latin Mass on many occasions and will kindly celebrate that liturgy for us this afternoon.

His defense of the Church led him and three other cardinals back in September of 2016 to send a dubia to Pope Francis, raising serious concerns about the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Unfortunately, no answer was ever given to that dubia. We are very grateful to Cardinal Burke for his friendship and for writing the foreword to the TFP’s book, The Synodal Process is a Pandora's Box.

Please give a warm welcome to His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke.

(Applause)

Cardinal Burke:

Thank you. Thank you very much. Before I begin my speech, I discovered that in addition to this wonderful event of 30 years of the history of the St. Louis de Montfort Academy and, of course, the blessing of the new addition, we are also celebrating another important day. Today is the 15th anniversary of the episcopal consecration of Bishop Waltersheid, our beloved bishop!

(Applause)

We ask Our Lord to give him many more years. We need more holy bishops like Bishop Waltersheid.

Dear Principal and faculty members, dear parents and students, and dear benefactors and friends of the Saint Louis de Montfort Academy, it is with profound joy that I stand before you today for the inauguration of these expanded premises of the Academy. Allow me, first of all, to praise you — sincerely and wholeheartedly — for the years of faithful Catholic academic apostolate you have been carrying out here. The very fact that new buildings are required to respond to the growing number of families seeking admission to the Academy for their children is itself a testimony to your fidelity to the Academy’s mission. Stone and mortar now testify to what grace, over many years, has been steadfastly accomplishing in souls here.

Yours is a most necessary apostolate — and one of the most beautiful forms of collaboration between the laity and the hierarchy of the Church. Catholic education is not merely the transmission of information; it is the harmonious integration of ethical and religious instruction, the teaching of human sciences, and the cultivation of natural talents. I witnessed this harmony in your excellent band, whose pipes and drums have become a distinctive and uplifting presence at the annual March for Life in Washington. There, before the nation, young men of the Academy not only provide music, but they also proclaim order, discipline, and Catholic identity.

The work of forming new generations of Catholic men is all the more urgent in our present circumstances. Many Catholic families today feel engulfed by a surrounding culture that is not merely secular, but aggressively hostile to Christian anthropology. The so-called “woke” ideology has advanced a gender agenda that seeks to dissolve the fundamental natural distinctions established by the Creator, promoting instead a unisex culture of androgyny. Against this confusion, Catholic education must stand as a luminous affirmation of truth: that, in the beginning, God created man, male and female, breathing His own life into their nostrils, and that, therefore, sexual identity is not self-invented but received, and that true freedom consists in living according to the gift of divine order (cfr. Gn 1, 27; 2, 7).

How appropriate, then, that you have chosen as your patron the great missionary, Saint Louis de Montfort.

First, because he founded two religious congregations devoted to education: the Daughters of Wisdom, entrusted with the direction and care of hospitals and schools for girls, and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel, dedicated entirely to the formation of boys. He understood that the renewal of Christian society begins with the Christian formation of youth, respecting, in all things, their identity as male and female.

Second, because he is the author of that magnificent work, Love of the Eternal Wisdom, whose very heart is a hymn to the Incarnate Word and a call to live in Him, according to His divine truth and love. In that book, he exposes the false wisdom of the world and contrasts it with Eternal Wisdom made flesh. Catholic education aims not merely to instruct, but to form, to shape personality and character so that young men grow into wise Christians and courageous soldiers of Christ in adult life.

Third, Saint Louis de Montfort is the great apostle of true devotion to the Virgin Mother of God, Our Lady. In his masterpiece, True Devotion to Mary, he offers a most profound and systematic defense of Our Lady’s prerogatives and her mission in the plan of salvation — not only as the one chosen by God the Father to bring His only-begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, into the world, but also as the spiritual Mother of His Mystical Body through her role as Corredemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces. He writes that since God the Son Incarnate came the first time in humility and secrecy through Mary, we may expect that He will come again to reign through her. If we labor for the restoration of Christian civilization and the reign of Christ in society, we must spread devotion to His Blessed Mother. Your choice of a spiritual patron was therefore not accidental. It is providential.

Finally, many of you know how Saint Louis de Montfort’s missionary labors in western France, especially in the region of the Vendée, formed a deeply Marian and fervently Catholic people. Through his preaching, songs, and poetry, he sowed seeds that would bear fruit decades later. When the Revolution sought to sever France from Rome and to impose a schismatic, state-controlled Church, shaped by the agnostic principles of the age, the peasants of the Vendée — formed in Marian devotion — rose in defense of altar and throne. Wearing the image of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus upon their garments, they heroically resisted the enemies of Christ. Only when the Terror unleashed the infamous “hellish columns” did the repression culminate in what historians now call the Vendée genocide — one of the first genocides of modern history. The fidelity of the peasants to Christ, taught to them by His Virgin Mother, that is, born of a truly Catholic formation, stands as a lesson for us today.

It is therefore fitting that an academy whose temporal curriculum is centered in Revolution and Counter-Revolution by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira should place itself under the patronage of Saint Louis de Montfort. The saint represents the living antidote to Revolution: Marian devotion, doctrinal clarity, and apostolic zeal. 

I can personally attest to the fruits of your educational endeavors. Millions of Americans have seen, through the videos of TFP Student Action, how the young men formed here who go onto university campuses to confront the prevailing ideology. They do so not with anger, not with disorder, but with clarity, charity, and courage. They calmly dismantle anti-Christian fallacies. They endure ridicule, threats, and even physical intimidation with dignity. And in every instance, they emerge victorious — not because they shout the loudest, but because they stand on truth.

This visible testimony — accessible to all on the Internet — confirms the excellence of the formation given within the walls of these buildings. With these new premises, that formation will extend to even more young men, for the establishment of the reign of Christ the King in their hearts and in our society.

And now, as we bless these buildings, we entrust them to Our Lady — whom you have recently honored with a beautiful Lourdes grotto on these grounds. May She watch over every classroom, every corridor, every heart formed here. May She bless your apostolate abundantly for the good of America, for the good of Holy Church, and for the coming of that reign of Mary foretold by Saint Louis de Montfort and announced at Fatima.

Let us move forward with confidence. The times are challenging — but grace is powerful to help us meet every challenge. If you remain faithful to Christ through Mary, if your hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, rest every more fully in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Saint Louis de Montfort Academy will continue to be a beacon of light in an age beset with darkness. Let us always remember the promise of Our Lord and Master, Christ the King: “If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honor him” (Jn 12, 26). 

May God bless you and your homes. 

¡Viva Cristo Rey! ¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!

(Standing ovation)