Did Pope Francis Just Say All Religions Are Equally True?

Pope Francis delights people worldwide, as we saw in his recent visit to East Asia and Oceania.

He also drives people crazy worldwide, and we saw that, too, for instance when he said: “All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine.”

This alarmed many Catholics who believe, with the Catechism, that, “All salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.” They worried that the Pope himself was saying otherwise. He’s not. (UPDATE: Yet the mistake persists. In his January 2025 interview with Mel Gibson, Joe Rogan takes it as a given that Pope Francis made this error.)

I wrote a whole book about the need to be clear about What Pope Francis Really Said. The book came to Audible last September and an article I wrote referencing it attracted 20,000 readers after Pope Francis spoke on 60 Minutes.

As I say in the book, there are three simple steps Catholics can take when they are troubled by what the Pope said.

First: Double check the Catechism.

Often, the “troubling” things Pope Francis says are just paraphrases of the Catechism.

What I quoted above about salvation is from No. 846 of the Catechism. What comes right before it and right after it are also important.

Right before it, the Church teaches about truth in other faiths, and says about Muslims: “together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

Right after it, the Catechism teaches that “Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience —  those too may achieve eternal salvation.”

Think of it this way: When we die, every one of us — each Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist — will face Jesus Christ, our king and judge. Some of us will embrace him; others will flee him.

What will that all-important moment of judgement look like? Here is one way I think of it.

Muslims may see in him the one God they love, or they may stick to what their religion gets wrong about God — the impossibility of the incarnation, for starters — and flee. Hindus may follow what their religion gets right about transcendence or what it gets wrong about reincarnation, and so on.

If any is saved, it will be through Christ, and their conformity to the conscience placed in them through him. If any is lost, it will be by rejecting Christ, and the conscience he gave them.

Second: After checking the Catechism, check the context.

It’s always helpful to read the actual words of the Pope, which are available with a little digging, and not just a reporter’s account.

When the Pope says something in a magisterial document defining what Catholics believe, then the charism of papal infallibility comes into play and Catholics must give the “obedience of faith.” But when the Pope says something in an informal setting, there is no expectation of infallibility.

These remarks were a impromptu question-and-answer session with young people of various religions (pictured above). Singapore has only a small percentage of Catholics. The Pope was not trying to give Catholics the final word on the Church’s teaching; he was giving non-Catholics a first word on the Church’s teaching.

At the same time, Catholics give “religious assent” even to non-magisterial statements the pope makes, when he is trying to help us understand revelation better. That means his words are something we should pay attention to.

In this case, Pope Francis is showing us that, when it comes to sharing the faith with non-believers, we should stress first what they get right, not what they get wrong. Jesus himself did this with the woman at the well, making sure to also stress that he is the one salvation. Jesus also stressed the holiness of other faiths in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Third: Follow the Pope, adding whatever details of the faith you think are important.

Last, if you think that the Pope left something out or said something unclearly, then maybe the Holy Spirit is urging you to action. Go and do what the Pope did: Encounter people who don’t know Jesus Christ, and share your love of Christ with them, adding the teachings of the Church you think he missed.

Catholics have “the obligation and the right to evangelize all,” as the Catechism puts it — or, as Pope Francis said, “There is a kind of preaching which falls to each of us as a daily responsibility. It has to do with bringing the Gospel to the people we meet, whether they be our neighbors or complete strangers” (No. 127).

He said that in The Joy of Evangelization  and followed it up by saying words very relevant to his remarks in Singapore.

“If a text was written to console, it should not be used to correct errors; if it was written as an exhortation, it should not be employed to teach doctrine; if it was written to teach something about God, it should not be used to expound various theological opinions” (No. 147).

Pope Francis’s Singapore address was meant to console. Follow it up with texts meant to teach. In this case, maybe:

• Dominus Iesus, by Cardinal Ratzinger and promulgated by St. John Paul II in 2000.
• Notification Dubois, which nicely summarizes the main points of Dominus Iesus from 2001.
• “The Church and Non-Christians” from the Catechism.

Of course, I also think you should read (or listen to) What Pope Francis Really Said, but I’m biased.

A version of this appeared at Aleteia.
Pictured: Pope Francis speaks to young people
in Singapore; Abaca Press Alamy Stock Photo

By Tom Hoopes