Cardinal Vesco’s contempt for the missionary martyrs

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 02, 2026

After letting loose the astonishing statement that “the Church is not there to convert,” and being rebuked by Bishop Robert Barron that “shall we say, puzzling” claim, Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco of Algeria has defended his stance. His line of defense could be interpreted as:

• so obvious as to be meaningless; or
• so ignorant as to be culpable; or
• so obtuse as to be insulting to all the saints and martyrs of the Church.

The first interpretation is the most charitable, but sadly the least plausible. It was barely possible, after Vesco’s first declaration, to say that perhaps he meant only to suggest that we should not demand the conversion of everyone we meet—that we should respect our interlocutors, try to understand their beliefs of others, and seek common ground rather than immediately bludgeoning them with arguments. A dedicated evangelist could accept that suggestion—with the proviso that eventually the Christian should help his new acquaintances to appreciate the greater riches of the Gospel.

But of course that is not what Vesco said; he said we should not seek to convert. And in defending himself against Bishop Barron he dug the hole deeper. As Amy Wellborn put it, that second statement was “an evisceration and flattening of the Gospel, somehow transitioning make disciples of all nations to be nice in all nations.”

“If I really thought that the Church does not exist to bring people to Christ,” Bishop Barron had said, “then I would resign and get an honest job.” Cardinal Vesco replied:

Please dear brother, stay a bishop, but the Church that gives life to me is the Church of St. John Paul II and the interreligious declaration of Assisi, whose 40th anniversary was celebrated in recent days and which Pope Leo had planned to attend; the Church of Pope Benedict, who, together with Cardinal Tauran, developed more ties with the Muslim world than any pope before him; the Church of Pope Francis, with the Abu Dhabi Declaration on Human Fraternity, signed with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar on February 4, 2019; and the Church of Pope Leo, with his visit to Algeria and his silent prayer at the Great Mosque of Algiers, shoulder to shoulder with the rector.

Yes, I believe that the believers of the three monotheistic religions have better things to do than to seek to convert one another. Rather, they should accept that there is a measure of what they cannot know about the faith of the other, and respect one another in their respective faiths. Our world needs believers who are deeply rooted in their own faith and who recognize one another as brothers and sisters in our one sacred humanity.

Here again we might try the most charitable interpretation of Vesco’s remarks—ignorance—and see if it could possibly fit. When he suggests that we should all accept the wisdom of other faiths, and claims the support of Pope John Paul II, perhaps he is unaware that Pope wrote: “In Islam all the richness of God’s self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has been definitively set aside… Islam is not a religion of redemption.” When he claims Pope Benedict XVI as an ally, perhaps he does not remember the Regensburg address, and the intemperate Muslim reaction it provoked. Perhaps he forgets that Pope Leo politely declined to pray at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

If Cardinal Vesco hopes that all believers might “respect one another in their respective faiths,” he overlooks the fact that from the perspective of Jews and Muslims, the fundamental Christian belief in the Incarnation, the acknowledgement of Jesus as the Son of God, is tantamount to blasphemy. But remember that St. Paul tried to beguile the men of Athens by praising their reverence for an unknown God, they were intrigued, but not particularly receptive. So in Corinth, he said, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” [1 Cor. 2:2] So if Christians enter into interfaith dialogue determined never to say anything that might give offense, in exchanges with Jews and Muslims they can never do what St. Paul did: namely, evangelize.

Yet it was also St. Paul who said, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.” [1 Cor 9:16] As a successor to the apostles, Cardinal Vesco lives under the same mandate to “preach the Gospel to all nations.” If he does not recognize that obligation, he is—again, putting it charitably—obtuse.

Why does the Church honor the missionary martyrs, who suffered and died because their proclamation of Christ’s message was offensive to pagan ears? Were they foolish, or worse, to speak out in faith? Should they have been content to learn more about the pagan traditions? If Cardinal Vesco is right, the names of those martyrs should be removed from the liturgical calendar, and replaced by missionaries more adept at dialogue.

However, that alternative would introduce a different problem. Since all the original apostles (save St. John) were martyrs, and bishops are successors to those apostles, whose example would Cardinal Vesco be following? Then again, I don’t know whose example he’s following now.