Gossip? From the Vatican and among hierarchs, yours and ours? Heaven forefend!
I am sure that there is gossip, but I don't think we should necessarily trust it. And I haven't even seen anything suggesting that the Vatican acted for the reasons you have given. It may have happened I suppose, but it would surprise me if that court was such a bad assignment that it was fully stocked with ecclesiastical ne'er-do-wells.
“I am sure that there is gossip, but I don’t think we should necessarily trust it.”
Sometimes that clerical/hierarchial “gossip” is pretty reliable. You needn’t credit it at all of course. Can you see how someone like Burke, disfavored among American hierarchs, a martinet and with a tendency to at least be perceived as a violator of the canons might become an embarrassment to the Vatican in other areas and with other people?
“...it would surprise me if that court was such a bad assignment that it was fully stocked with ecclesiastical ne’er-do-wells.”
All things considered, its probably not; no heavy lifting, that’s for sure and for someone with no pastoral ability it may have been viewed as a safe backwater. That said, there is a tradition of getting problematic American hierarchs, especially prominent ones, out of the country and off to Rome. Cardinal Law’s appointment to the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, with the title of “Archpriest” springs to mind.