“The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by attraction.”
So said Benedict XVI in 2007 in an address to the Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops (CELAM) in Aparecida, Brazil.
Among the most prominent members of CELAM present that day was none other than Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a man for whom Ratzinger’s words were likely as satisfying as a hot cup of yerba mate on a cool Buenos Aries evening.
Six years later, Benedict shocked the world by resigning (aka fleeing for fear of the wolves or something even worse), at which point this same Bergoglio was elected as his successor.
In 2014, while performing under the stage name His Holiness Pope Francis, Bergoglio appointed a soft-spoken Augustinian by the name of Robert Prevost as Bishop of the CELAM Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru. There, the American born cleric remained until 2023, at which time he was called to the Occupied Vatican to serve as Prefect of the Conciliar Congregation for Bishops (aka Bergoglio’s understudy).
Following Francis’ exit stage left in 2025, Prevost was thrust into the spotlight as “Leo,” the current leading man in the Synagogical spectacular, Vatican II: Let’s play church!
Given this brief historical overview, an outside observer could hardly be blamed for imagining that membership in CELAM is akin to an anti-papal apprenticeship program that, in recent decades, has functioned as a veritable springboard for launching under-the-radar modernist bishops into the top job at Church-of-Man headquarters.
In reality, it is by manifesting one’s open opposition to so-called “proselytism” that an individual bishop becomes a genuine conciliar papabile; it just so happens that CELAM, which covers all of South America – home to Pachamama and an assortment of other pagan idols – is an ideal place to do so.
It’s not the only place, however.
This brings me to Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the Archbishop of Algiers, a once little-known Dominican who recently found himself at the center of a self-ignited firestorm.
In an October 23rd interview with a Belgian Catholic media outlet, Visco said:
We are the Church of this people. Not a proselytizing Church, not a Church that is there to convert, but a Church that aspires to be one of the components of this people… In monotheistic religions, proselytism is poison, because it implies considering the other person’s religion false.
This wasn’t Vesco’s first anti-proselytism rodeo. In a 2013 article published by the Diocese of Oran shortly after the newly consecrated Vesco was made its bishop, he said:
[The Church in Algeria is] the witness of a presence in friendship, without proselytism; it is the witness of a God who loves all men.
These remarks were published just after Benedict had captured the undivided attention of nearly the entire world by announcing his intent to resign. In other words, no one noticed.
This time around, however, many people noticed Vesco’s comments about a Church that is not there to convert, among them, Bishop Robert “Hell just might be empty” Barron, who stated in response (among other things) on social media:
Last time I checked, the Founder said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore 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.” Sure sounds like conversion to me.
Rather than taking the arguably higher cardinalatial road and ignoring Barron’s criticism, Vesco took to his Facebook page to offer the following rejoinder (translated from the French):
Regardless of what anyone else may think, the Church that sustains me is the Church of Saint John Paul II—and the interreligious declaration of Assisi (the 40th anniversary of which was recently commemorated, an event that Pope Leo had planned to attend); it is the Church of Pope Benedict, who, together with Cardinal Tauran, forged more ties with the Muslim world than any pope before him; it is the Church of Pope Francis, with the Abu Dhabi Declaration on Human Fraternity, signed alongside the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar on February 4, 2019; and it is the Church of Pope Leo, as seen in his visit to Algeria and his silent prayer at the Great Mosque of Algiers, standing shoulder to shoulder with its rector … Our world needs believers who are firmly rooted in their own faith, yet who recognize one another as brothers (and sisters) within a single, sacred humanity.
At this, let’s stop for a moment to ponder the immense gravity of this statement.
Vesco, it seems to me, has done a great service to those who are sincerely wondering if the conciliar church is truly the Holy Roman Catholic Church. This, he has done by making it plain that his church, the one of which he is a prelate, is the church of Wojtyla, Ratzinger, Bergoglio, and Prevost.
It is not, in other words, the Church that was served by St. Peter and his successors, up to and including Popes Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI and XII, each of whom would have thoroughly condemned the grave offenses listed in Vesco’s testimonial.
Vesco has also provided a genuine service by offering a very clear explanation as to what proselytism is according to such men, and why leaders of the conciliar church, including himself, deplore it. He stated:
We are not a proselytizing Church, not a Church that is there to convert … Proselytism is poison, because it implies considering the other person’s religion false.
Take Vesco at his word. He knows that of which he speaks.
NB: Despite any bogus claims to the contrary, proselytism is conversion. That’s it. It is nothing more nefarious than preaching the Good News, inviting men to Baptism for the forgiveness of sin, urging those outside to enter into the bosom of Holy Mother Church to be nurtured in the sacraments and guided along the solitary path to eternal life in Christ.
Yes, solitary.
Once again, listen to Vesco: Proselytism is poison because it implies that the Catholic religion is the one true religion.
According to the conciliar mindset as made manifest in the words and the works of Wojtyla, Ratzinger, Bergoglio and Prevost, it is unacceptable to even imply that Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, paganism, and other such religions are false. The reason? Such would be an offense, not against God, but rather against what Vesco calls, sacred humanity, the same to which Vatican Council II paid great homage.
The earliest post-conciliar reference to “proselytism” that I could find comes from a 1970 Joint Statement produced by a theological working group of conciliar churchmen in conjunction with the World Council of Churches (WCC) titled, Common Witness and Proselytism.
This Statement, crafted by an enlightened class of post-conciliar conciliar theologians in collaboration with a contingent of heretics representing the WCC, is more important than it may seem.
Recorded within its pages is a declaration insisting that the Christian world can no longer invoke, much less understand, the word “proselytism” according to its traditional meaning.
Footnote 3 in text reads:
In certain linguistic, cultural and confessional contexts, the term “proselytism,” used without qualification, has acquired this pejorative sense. In those other languages and contexts in which the term still retains its more original meaning of « zeal in spreading the faith », it will be necessary always to use “proselytism in the pejorative sense ” or some phrase which denotes defective attitudes and conduct.
Did you get that?
“Proselytism,” until very recently, was well understood as “zeal in spreading the faith.” For reasons we’re about to discuss, however, the word has since acquired a new meaning, one that suggests unseemly behavior.
So, how and why did “proselytism” acquire such a bad rap?
Footnote 2 of the Statement cites the following documents as those that provide the foundation for the updated definition:
- Universal Declaration on Human Rights (United Nations, 1948).
- Christian Witness, Proselytism and Religious liberty in the Setting of the WCC, of the Third WCC Assembly (1961)
- Declaration on Religious Freedom (Vatican II, 1965).
Note the chronological progression (better understood as a theological regression) into a shameless brand of humanism wherein every man allegedly enjoys an inalienable right to thumb his nose at the one true God, embracing any religion whatsoever that he may choose, or even no religion at all.
In short, it was necessary to redefine “proselytism” in order to avoid disturbing the ill-formed consciences of men who believe that human beings enjoy a natural right to unrestrained liberty in all things, i.e., humanism.
Three years after the Joint Statement was issued, Paul VI became the first anti-pope to place his imprimatur upon the redefinition of proselytism when he publicly invoked the word according to its new meaning.
In a “Common Declaration” issued by Montini and the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, we find the following:
We reject all forms of proselytism, in the sense of acts by which persons seek to disturb each other’s communities by recruiting new members from each other through methods, or because of attitudes of mind, which are opposed to the exigencies of Christian love or to what should characterize the relationships between Churches.
NB: This text, bearing the signature of an alleged pope, not only carries more weight than the Joint WCC statement, it also provides a more precise definition of this dreaded proselytism, one that refutes the common Novus Ordite claim that it refers specifically to conversion by threat or by force, something that the Holy Roman Catholic Church has always condemned.
According to Paul VI, proselytism entails “recruiting new members” to one’s own religion, i.e., calling those outside the faith to conversion. What’s more, it seems that, in the Montinian view, one can be guilty of the crime of proselytizing merely by exhibiting a certain attitude of mind.
Though the precise attitude in question isn’t explicitly explained, we can thank Cardinal Vesco for providing clarity on this point: It is an attitude founded upon the unshakable conviction that there is but one true faith, namely, the Holy Catholic faith.
In conclusion, Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, via his recent comments on proselytism and conversion, shed no small amount of light on some very dark truths. In so doing, whether inadvertently or not, he also made of himself a bona fide papabile.
Remember his name.
