During his recent visit to Singapore, Pope Francis went further than any of his predecessors in recognizing the value of non-Christian traditions. “All religions are paths to God,” Francis told a group of young people. “There is only one God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian.”
Some prominent conservatives have reacted with scorn. Writing in First Things, archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia Charles Chaput reminded the pope that “Christians hold that Jesus alone is the path to God.” On X, former bishop Joseph Strickland went a step further: “Please pray for Pope Francis to clearly state that Jesus Christ is the only Way.”
It might be tempting for Francis’s defenders to dismiss his remarks as off-script and therefore not authoritative. That would be a mistake. The pope’s affirmation of non-Christian religions, while generous, is not contrary to official Catholic teaching. And it is not a slip of the tongue. Since the start of his pontificate Francis has approached other traditions with a remarkable spirit of openness and humility, all the while insisting on Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The foundations for Francis’s approach—affirmation of the centrality of Christ and of the value of other religious traditions—were laid at the Second Vatican Council. “The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions,” states the December 1965 declaration Nostra aetate. “She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.” How the Triune God is present in non-Christian traditions has never been specified in Church teaching. As the culminating document of Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, put it, "The Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery."
This historic renunciation of the dominant understanding of the Catholic precept, ex ecclesiam nulla salus—no salvation outside the institutional Church—marked a new beginning for interfaith dialogue. Pope John Paul II carried forth the generous interfaith spirit of Vatican II, most spectacularly with a gathering of religious leaders for the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi in October 1986. While underscoring his identity as “a believer in Jesus Christ, and, in the Catholic Church, the first witness of faith in him” in Assisi, he saw the gathering as “an anticipation of what God would like the developing history of humanity to be: a fraternal journey in which we accompany one another towards the transcendent goal which he sets for us.”
As the cardinal overseeing doctrine under John Paul and later as Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger took a somewhat more restrictive view of non-Christian traditions. His 2000 declaration Dominus Iesus acknowledged that "the followers of other religions can receive divine grace,” but insisted that, compared with Christians, “objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation." Calling other traditions “gravely deficient” was not generous, but it was also no repudiation of Nostra aetate. Ratzinger acknowledged that what he called the “mystery of Christ” was at work through other traditions. He just foregrounded the Catholic belief that that work was most manifest in Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular. Neither John Paul II nor Francis would disagree. In the foundational text of his papacy, the 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Francis emphasized, citing John Paul, that “there can be no true evangelization without the explicit proclamation of Jesus as Lord.”
What is new with Francis is a more humble and generous tone, a willingness to acknowledge more fully the presence of God in other traditions—and even in the wider secular culture. In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis recognized the efficacy of other traditions’ religious rituals. “God’s working in them,” he noted, “tends to produce signs and rites, sacred expressions which in turn bring others to a communitarian experience of journeying towards God.” In the same document Francis affirmed "those who do not consider themselves part of any religious tradition, yet sincerely seek the truth, goodness and beauty which we believe have their highest expression and source in God.” The pope included these ideas in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti. While emphasizing that for Christians “the wellspring of human dignity and fraternity is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” he acknowledged that “others drink from other sources.”
Perhaps Francis’s single most notable embrace of other religious traditions as paths to God was the Declaration on Human Fraternity that he signed in 2019 with Grand Imam Ahmed El-Tayeb of al-Azhar, the preeminent institution of the Sunni Muslim world. Echoing a famous verse from the Qur’an, the document states that “the pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom.” The idea that religious pluralism is not just a reality but a positive good marked a step forward along the path lit by Vatican II, one denounced by some conservatives at the time. But it, too, was well within the Nostra aetate framework. To acknowledge the diversity of faith traditions as an ever-present characteristic of God’s creation and a potential source of growth and positive transformation is not to deny the centrality of Jesus in the Christian tradition. It is only to affirm, in a new way, the depth and mystery of God’s presence in our world.
Francis’s humble and generous approach to interreligious dialogue—most vivid in his recognition of other traditions as paths to God—is not oriented only to Truth. For Francis, dialogue is ultimately a practice, a way to advance God’s kingdom of justice and peace. Since his tenure as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis has emphasized the importance of encounter, of engaging people across difference in pursuit of common ground. A “culture of encounter”, he writes in Fratelli tutti, “means that we, as a people, should be passionate about meeting others, seeking points of contact, building bridges, planning a project that includes everyone.” Given the deep divisions within and across our societies, advancing a culture of encounter is a both a Gospel imperative and a practical one. Francis’s humble and generous approach to interreligious dialogue can help us along that path.
