By Kevin Lavery, KWMU
St. Louis – St. Louis area Catholics have a new spiritual leader. Raymond Burke was installed Monday as the eighth archbishop of the St. Louis archdiocese.
The service at the Cathedral Basilica included hundreds of area priests, as well as Cardinal Justin Rigali, the former head of the St. Louis archdiocese.
In his first homily, Archbishop Burke said society is characterized by violence, and noted that the church must foster a reverence for human life at all stages.
"Too many lives have already been taken through violence," Burke said. "Let us spare no effort in the apostolate of the respect for all human life."
Archbishop Burke attracted attention earlier this month by ordering priests in his former Wisconsin diocese to withhold communion from Catholic public officials unless they renounced their support for abortion rights and euthanasia.