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Cardinal Vesco says Catholic Church is ‘not there to convert’ in interview on evangelisation
AdVaticanum ^ | October 28, 2026 | Niwa Limbu

Posted on 10/28/2026 12:17:34 PM PDT by ebb tide

Cardinal Vesco says Catholic Church is ‘not there to convert’ in interview on evangelisation

Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco has said the Church is “not there to convert”, arguing that proselytism is “poison” and that Christians should approach other religions through fraternity rather than seeking conversions

Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco has said that the Catholic Church is “not a proselytising Church, not a Church that is there to convert”, arguing that its role is to form part of Algerian society rather than seek religious conversions.

In an interview with Belgian Catholic media outlet CathoBel on 23 October, the Archbishop of Algiers said: “We are the Church of this people. Not a proselytising Church, not a Church that is there to convert, but a Church that aspires to be one of the components of this people.”

Cardinal Vesco has repeatedly questioned whether evangelisation should be understood as an effort to bring people from other religions into the Catholic Church. Later in the interview, His Eminence said: “In monotheistic religions, proselytism is poison, because it implies considering the other person’s religion false.” The French-born Cardinal illustrated his objection by imagining someone who praises another person while disparaging their religious beliefs, arguing that such an approach “puts an end to dialogue”.

The Cardinal also rejected the suggestion that belonging to Islam prevents a person from aspiring to democracy. He urged Christians to decide whether they would approach religious and cultural differences through fear or fraternity.

“Do we see ourselves as a besieged fortress? […] Or do we choose fraternity? For me, it is the only worthwhile option,” His Eminence said.

Responding to rhetoric surrounding the so-called “great replacement”, a theory that claims native populations are being displaced by immigration, His Eminence argued that Christians should not seek to restore a former Christian political order as their answer to contemporary demographic and cultural changes. “Christians have another card to play than re-establishing a regime of Christendom,” His Eminence said.

The Cardinal also linked the question of religious identity to the Church’s synodal process, arguing that greater participation has changed how the Church understands its own composition. He went so far as to say that the process had “buried any possibility” of imagining a future Vatican III consisting exclusively of bishops.

His latest comments follow earlier interviews in which he argued that Christian witness should not be measured by the number of people who convert.

In an April 2018 interview with Le Point, when he was Bishop of Oran, Algeria, Cardinal Vesco said: “I think that the Gospel is not transmitted by proselytism but by witness of life, by involvement in society, by friendship. This transmission does not necessarily lead to a change of religion.”

“The purpose of the Church is not to try to convert Muslims. But we welcome people who do so,” His Eminence added. “What matters to me is not that a Muslim becomes Christian, but that a person has a spiritual experience.” He also argued that movement between religions occurred through “porosity, not by proselytism”.

In February 2022, after becoming Archbishop of Algiers, he told the Swiss Catholic website Cath.ch that Christians needed to move beyond the assumption that they must bring others to their own religious truth, while acknowledging that Muslims might possess elements of truth that Christians had not fully recognised.

“We must manage to free ourselves from the idea that we must evangelise, bring others to our truth, and at the same time accept that there may also be, in Islam, a share of truth that escapes us,” His Eminence said.

However, other Church prelates have articulated a different emphasis on the relationship between evangelisation and conversion. In 2019, Cardinal Robert Sarah, then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, insisted that Catholics had a duty to evangelise and an urgent responsibility to bring the unbaptised to Christ. Responding to Pope Francis’s remarks in Morocco against seeking converts, he invoked Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations and St Paul’s declaration, “Woe to me if I do not evangelise”.

“Whether it is Muslims, Buddhists or animists, we must evangelise everyone by proclaiming Jesus Christ, because he is the only way to salvation,” Cardinal Sarah said.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, similarly distinguished mission from proselytism in a May 2016 interview. Christians, he said, “have a mission to convert all non-Christian religions’ people [except] Judaism”, while insisting that “we can make mission only with a credible witness and without any proselytism”.

In the United States, Bishop Robert Barron has also challenged attempts to separate evangelisation from conversion. Responding to statements, including those made around World Youth Day 2023, suggesting that the Church did not want to convert young people to Christ or to Catholicism, His Excellency argued that conversion was not a “dirty word”.

Bishop Barron said that “pitting ‘evangelisation’ against ‘conversion’ is nothing less than pitting the Church against the will of God”. He has also emphasised that the Church grows through attraction while continuing to proclaim the truth, explaining Pope Francis’s use of proselytism as a reference to “obnoxious evangelisation”.


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Theology
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In February 2022, after becoming Archbishop of Algiers, he told the Swiss Catholic website Cath.ch that Christians needed to move beyond the assumption that they must bring others to their own religious truth, while acknowledging that Muslims might possess elements of truth that Christians had not fully recognised.

Vesco is a frankencardinal; elevated in December 2024, he was one of Francis' last "gift" to his synodal "church".

1 posted on 10/28/2026 12:17:34 PM PDT by ebb tide
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To: Al Hitan; Fedora; irishjuggler; Jaded; kalee; markomalley; miele man; Mrs. Don-o; ...

Barf Alert


2 posted on 10/28/2026 12:18:23 PM PDT by ebb tide ("Rage-bait" is only in the eye of the flaming modernists.)
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To: ebb tide

This just in: The Great Commission has been repealed


3 posted on 10/28/2026 12:20:23 PM PDT by j.havenfarm (25 years on Free Republic, 12/10/25! More than 12,750 replies and still not shutting up!)
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To: ebb tide

“ while acknowledging that Muslims might possess elements of truth that Christians had not fully recognised.”

That’s the thing about “truth” - some things may be 99% true and harmless, but it invariably contains a 1% element that is fatal 100% of the time.

Make no peace with Satan or his minions. Ever.


4 posted on 10/28/2026 12:30:58 PM PDT by dadgum (Fight to WIN or do not fight at all. Destroy the wicked!)
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To: j.havenfarm

“This just in: The Great Commission has been repealed.”
___________________________________________________
J.haven, you beat me to it. If there is one clear directive in the gospels that any Christian clergy should respect and obey, I’d think this is one.


5 posted on 10/28/2026 12:37:36 PM PDT by oldplayer (Anyon)
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To: ebb tide

what happened to “make disciples of the whole world?”

When the going gets tough, be a quish.


6 posted on 10/28/2026 12:50:08 PM PDT by OpusatFR
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To: ebb tide

So, the Roman Catholic church is no longer Apostolic?


7 posted on 10/28/2026 12:52:39 PM PDT by MortMan (Americans are increasingly isolated by their connectivity.)
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To: ebb tide

I guess that, “zgo into all the world and preach the gospel...” thingy was just a suggestion.


8 posted on 10/28/2026 12:56:45 PM PDT by Flaming Conservative ((Pray without ceasing))
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To: Flaming Conservative

Sigh. Go, not zgo.


9 posted on 10/28/2026 12:57:55 PM PDT by Flaming Conservative ((Pray without ceasing))
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To: ebb tide

“ Bishop Barron said that “pitting ‘evangelisation’ against ‘conversion’ is nothing less than pitting the Church against the will of God”. He has also emphasised that the Church grows through attraction while continuing to proclaim the truth, explaining Pope Francis’s use of proselytism as a reference to “obnoxious evangelisation”.

This is actually the Catholicism of the catechism

These people are arguing in public and it’s not ok

They need to get together and figure out how to deal with a world in which they have not put their foot down about birth control and. Is the world is under siege with little Christian defense.


10 posted on 10/28/2026 1:01:41 PM PDT by stanne
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To: ebb tide
Remember when the Pope-splainers were out there saying that proselytism is bad, but evangelism is good?

Well, apparently even evangelism is bad, guys.

The notion that other religions have "truths" that Catholics do not fully recognize is outright heresy.
11 posted on 10/28/2026 1:09:38 PM PDT by Antoninus (Confusion and disorder to the Left.)
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To: stanne
“We must manage to free ourselves from the idea that we must evangelise, bring others to our truth, and at the same time accept that there may also be, in Islam, a share of truth that escapes us,” His Eminence said.

How is this not heresy?
12 posted on 10/28/2026 1:11:23 PM PDT by Antoninus (Confusion and disorder to the Left.)
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To: Antoninus

It is very disturbing to me. I believe I addressed it in my comments

We need them to get together and privately discuss these philosophical ideas amongst themselves and come up with something

Their allowance of birth control when their own Humanae Vitae from the 1960s maps out perfectly how this was going to happen and they ignored it

Artificial birth control, which Muslims reject, was always going to lead to our being outnumbered like this.


13 posted on 10/28/2026 1:17:44 PM PDT by stanne
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To: stanne
They need to get together and figure out how to deal with a world in which they have not put their foot down about birth control

Imagine if the early church had been too scared of losing members to tell the Greeks and Romans that orgies are a sin. Islam grows because they have lots of babies and they follow their religion. Christians could stand to learn those particular “truths” from them.

14 posted on 10/28/2026 1:39:11 PM PDT by RightOnTheBorder
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To: stanne
Artificial birth control, which Muslims reject, was always going to lead to our being outnumbered like this.

You ain't kiddin'. The Christian West has contracepted, aborted, and sodomized itself into oblivion.


Source.

15 posted on 10/28/2026 1:51:23 PM PDT by Antoninus (Confusion and disorder to the Left.)
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To: RightOnTheBorder
Christians could stand to learn those particular “truths” from them.

We already have those truths. Our bishops and priests have been too scared to preach them for the past 60 years.
16 posted on 10/28/2026 1:52:26 PM PDT by Antoninus (Confusion and disorder to the Left.)
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To: ebb tide
Oddly enough, the Bible has something to say on this topic.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20 - see also Romans 10:14-15, Matthew 9:36-38, 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 and many others. It is a satanic hatred of mankind which seeks to prevent people from hearing the Gospel and being saved.

17 posted on 10/28/2026 1:56:27 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
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To: RightOnTheBorder

Humanae vitae presents an argument against artificial birth control and states how it is clearly a sin

People run to other religions and ways of life. But Catholicism prohibits artificial birth control.


18 posted on 10/28/2026 1:59:38 PM PDT by stanne
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To: Antoninus

Well it is heresy, pure and simple, but we have to go after those dangerous traditional Catholics who want to worship in the old rite. They are the real enemy.
/S


19 posted on 10/28/2026 2:30:56 PM PDT by Deo volente ("Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.” -Niccolò Machiavelli)
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To: ebb tide

Grow or Die.

Catholicism is committing suicide.


20 posted on 10/28/2026 3:09:55 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (When your Supreme Leader is easily whacked by Jews, reconsider how Akhbar your Allah is!)
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