A leading Catholic Church Cardinal has said Ireland is worse than pagans for legalising same-sex marriage.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, of the United States, told the Newman Society at Oxford University’s Catholic Society, that the Yes vote in last weekend’s referendum was: “a defiance of God."

“It’s just incredible,” he said, according to The Tablet. “Pagans may have tolerated homosexual behaviours, they never dared say this was marriage.”

Cardinal Burke is currently the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, having recently been moved there from a senior role at the Vatican.

He has long espoused fiercely anti-gay views, once saying children should be kept away from gay relatives.

“If homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are as reason teaches us and also our faith, then what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person?”

Burke has alleged some within the church are pushing a "gay-agenda".

Burke’s comments come shortly after another senior Vatican cardinal, Pietro Parolin, called the vote “a defeat for humanity.”