A Church united on the essential truths of the Christian faith : this is what Pope Leo wants, judging by the actions and words of the start of his pontificate.
And what truth is more fundamental for Christianity than that which sees in Jesus the only savior of all men ?
Leo recalled, in the simplest and clearest words, this primordial “creed” in the talk he gave on August 25 to a group of altar servers who had come from France :
“Who will come to save us ? Not only from our sufferings, from our limits and our mistakes, but even from death itself ? The answer is perfectly clear, and resounds in the History of 2000 years : only Jesus comes to save us, no-one else : because only he has the power to do so – He is God Almighty in person – and because he loves us. Saint Peter said it emphatically : ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12). Never forget these words, dear friends : imprint them on your heart, and place Jesus at the centre of your lives.”
And yet, precisely over this pillar of the Christian faith, a very insidious dispute was ignited in the Church a quarter of a century ago, under the banner of interreligious dialogue and the equality of paths to salvation. A dispute that then-pope John Paul II and his guardian angel of doctrine, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, sought to resolve with the declaration “Dominus Iesus” of August 6, 2000, “on the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church.”
With the result of fueling the conflict even more. "Dominus Iesus" was contested at all levels : pastoral, theological, hierarchical. It was criticized by illustrious cardinals like Walter Kasper, Edward Cassidy, Carlo Maria Martini.
Nor did the dispute settle down in the subsequent years. So much so that in 2005, in the preconclave following the death of John Paul II, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi felt it his duty to “bring to the attention of the next pope” precisely “the incredible incident of 'Dominus Iesus'.” And he explained the reason as follows :
“That Jesus is the only necessary Savior of all is a truth that for over twenty centuries – beginning with Peter’s discourse after Pentecost – it was never felt necessity to restate. This truth is, so to speak, the minimum threshold of the faith ; it is the primordial certitude, it is among believers the simple and most essential fact. In two thousand years this has never been brought into doubt, not even during the crisis of Arianism, and not even during the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. The fact of needing to issue a reminder of this in our time tells us the extent of the gravity of the current situation.”
The 2005 conclave elected Benedict XVI, who had written and signed "Dominus Iesus." But even he was unable to quell the dispute. Still in 2014, two years after his resignation from the papacy and in the reign of Francis, many – to name one of the many, Church historian Alberto Melloni – continued to give credence to the “fake news” according to which the document had been written by coarse curial stenographers, rashly allowed to act by John Paul II and Ratzinger.
With Ratzinger, who instead reported in writing this incontrovertible background, from the hermitage to which he had retired after his resignation from the papacy :
“In the face of the firestorm that had developed around ‘Dominus Iesus,’ John Paul II told me that he intended to defend the document unequivocally at the Angelus [of Sunday, October1, 2000 – ed.]. He invited me to write a text for the Angelus that would be, so to speak, airtight and not subject to any different interpretation whatsoever. It had to be completely unmistakable that he approved the document unconditionally. So I prepared a brief address : I did not intend, however, to be too brusque, and so I tried to express myself clearly but without harshness. After reading it, the pope asked me once again : ‘Is it really clear enough?’ I replied that it was.”
With this parting comment, subtly ironic : “Those who know theologians will not be surprised that in spite of this there were afterward some who maintained that the pope had prudently distanced himself from that text.”
Nor with Pope Francis was the dispute pacified. Quite the opposite. He himself kept it very much alive, if one simply rereads his verbatim remarks on the equality of all religions for the ends of salvation, on September 13, 2024, in Singapore :
“One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here is your capacity for interfaith dialogue. This is very important because if you start arguing, ‘My religion is more important than yours…,’ or ‘Mine is the true one, yours is not true…,’ where does this lead ? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, ‘Destruction.’] That is correct. All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children. ‘But my God is more important than yours!’ Is this true ? There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian. Understood?”
With Francis, the mitigator was that no one took what he said literally anymore, after years of his vague and contradictory words on the most disparate topics.
But what about Leo ? Clarity of expression is one of his undisputed gifts. And those few, crystal-clear words he spoke on August 25 to the French altar servers are a perfect summary of the primordial and foundational truth of the Christian faith : the certainty that “only Jesus comes to save us, no-one else.”
Leo did not cite "Dominus Iesus" in his support. He did not mention how much it has been contested. But he indicated the direction that he wants the Church to take on this decisive question.
With a further, equally vital instruction. Because after the exhortation to “imprint on your heart” Peter’s statement about Jesus : “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved,” he continued :
“And the Church, from generation to generation, carefully conserves the memory of the death and resurrection of the Lord of whom she is witness, as her most precious treasure. She preserves and transmits it by celebrating the Eucharist, which you have the joy and honour of serving. The Eucharist is the treasure of the Church, the treasure of treasures. Ever since the very first day of her existence, and then throughout the centuries, the Church has celebrated Mass, Sunday after Sunday, to remember what the Lord has done for her. In the hands of the priest, and in his words ‘This is my Body, this is my Blood,’ Jesus once again gives his life on the altar, he once again sheds his blood for us. Dear altar servers, the celebration of Mass saves us today ! It saves the world today ! It is the most important event in the life of the Christian and in the life of the Church, because it is the encounter in which God gives himself to us for love, again and again. Christians do not go to Mass out of duty, but because they absolutely need to ; the need for the life of God who gives himself without asking for anything in return!”
Jesus, sole savior of all, and the Eucharist. Faith and the sacrament. Pope Leo simply goes to the heart of Christianity, and it is there that he wants to lead the Church, united in the essential. “In illo uno unum,” says his motto, in the words of St. Augustine : united in Jesus, and in him alone.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry : traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.
