ROME — Pope Francis told young people in Singapore on Friday that all religions are paths to God, an affirmation that seems to counter the Christian belief in Jesus Christ as the sole savior of humanity.
In an interreligious meeting with youth at Singapore’s Catholic Junior College, the pontiff underscored the importance of interreligious dialogue, insisting that there is no point in arguing about who is right since everybody is right.
If people start fighting over whose religion is more important “or saying, ‘Mine is the true religion; yours isn’t true,’ where does that lead? Where?” the pope asked.
Someone in the audience answered, “Destruction,” to which Pope Francis assented.
“Exactly,” he said. “All religions are a path to reach God. They are, to use a comparison, like different languages, different dialects to get there.”
“But God is God for everyone,” he continued. “And since God is God for everyone, we are all children of God.”
“But my God is more important than yours!” he said, dramatizing. “Is this true? There is only one God, and we, our religions are languages, paths to reach God.”
“Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian, but they are different paths. Understood?” he said.
Pope Francis spoke in Italian, but the Vatican’s English-language translation of the text altered some of his more controversial statements, softening them, perhaps to avoid stirring up conflict.
While in Italian the pope asserted that “all religions are a path to reach God,” the Vatican’s English rendering of the text said, “Religions are seen as paths trying to reach God” (emphasis added).
The Italian original said that religions are “like different languages, different dialects to get there,” while the English-language text said that they are “like different languages that express the divine.”
“There is only one God, and we, our religions are languages, paths to reach God,” the pope said in Italian, to which the Vatican translated, “There is only one God, and religions are like languages that try to express ways to approach God.”
“Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian, but they are different paths,” the pope actually said, which the English translation cropped to only read, “Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian,” leaving aside any reference to “paths.”
In its own authoritative text on the “unicity and universality of the salvific mystery of Jesus Christ,” the Vatican cites the Acts of the Apostles: “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).
“It must therefore be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith that the universal salvific will of the One and Triune God is offered and accomplished once for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God,” the text reads.
For some, “Jesus would be one of the many faces which the Logos has assumed in the course of time to communicate with humanity in a salvific way,” the document warns, a thesis that is “in profound conflict with the Christian faith.”
“For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all,” the text states, citing Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy (1 Tim 2:4-6).
The text was personally ratified and confirmed by Saint Pope John Paul II, who ordered its publication.