In an address to a delegation from Mongolia, Francis praised what he called the ‘rich religious heritage’ of Buddhism, without calling Buddhists to convert to the Catholic Church.
(LifeSiteNews) -- Pope Francis applauded post-Soviet Mongolia’s “profound” Buddhist religious revival without mentioning Jesus Christ or any call to conversion to Catholicism in his recent address to delegates from the country.
“By reviving traditional spiritual practices and integrating them into the nation’s development, Mongolia has reclaimed its rich religious heritage,” Francis said in reference to Buddhism, which is by far the majority religion in the country. The religious practice does not acknowledge God as Creator, let alone Jesus Christ.
During the reign of Communism in the country from 1924 to 1992, Buddhism was brutally repressed, along with other religions in the country, and experienced a resurgence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991.
Francis has often met with Buddhists and praised their religion without calling them to convert to Catholicism, thereby neglecting what the Church has historically recognized is an essential part of true ecumenism, since it is a dogma that there is “no salvation outside the Church.” Christ Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)
Instead of calling the Buddhists to conversion, Francis expressed a wish that their meeting with the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue “will serve as an opportunity for deepening cooperation in promoting a society founded on dialogue, fraternity, religious freedom, justice and social harmony.” He did not elaborate on how Buddhists and Christians can share a vision of “justice” while they do not share an understanding of the moral law.
Under Francis, the Vatican has gone so far as to participate in religiously indifferent Buddhist-Christian colloquiums, and, in 2023, the Vatican issued a statement contrary to Church teaching and to Scripture that attempted to put Jesus Christ and Buddha on the same level by declaring, “As Buddhists and Christians, we see the Buddha and Jesus as Great Healers.”
This is a blatant, egregious falsehood, since the man known as the Buddha did not acknowledge God, cannot be called anything other than a false prophet, and therefore cannot be a true “healer.”
During Francis' meeting with the Mongolian Buddhist delegation, he also praised their “commitment to religious freedom and dialogue among the different religious denominations” for “cultivat(ing) a space of mutual respect for all traditions.”
Far from holding Francis’ esteem for “religious freedom,” the Catholic Church has a long history of rebuking this idea as contrary to Christ’s desire that all men be saved.
Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors condemns as erroneous and heretical the notion that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”
In his 1888 encyclical Libertas, Pope Leo XIII also declared that it is “contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.”
Initially, only the Catholic Church in Mongolia X page shared the news of the Mongolian Buddhists’ meeting with Francis, while the Pontiff’s address to the delegation remained unpublished by the Vatican website, and the meeting was not included in his calendar for the day, as LifeSiteNews senior Vatican correspondent Michael Haynes noted.
The next day, on January 17, the bulletin for the day of the meeting was amended and his speech was published.
